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THE LAW OF GROWTH 



AND OTHER SERMONS 



BY THE 



RT. REV. PHILLIPS BROOKS, D.D. 

Late Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts 



NINTH SERIES 



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1 



NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-third Street 
1902 









THF I <S*ASY SF 

Two C -te RfcCEtv** 

MAR. 22 1902 


Copyright entkv 
CLASS Ct<XXc No. 


COPY 


V 



Copyright, 1902 

BY 

E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
Published March, 1902 



TEbe Iknickerbocfcer ipress, mew 2£orfe 



CONTENTS. 



Sermon Page 

I. The Law of Growth i 

"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and 
whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even 
that which he seemeth to have." — Luke viii. i8 8 
(March n, 1877.) 

II. Half-Life ....... 20 

* i Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteous- 
ness shall look down from heaven." — Psalm lxxxv. 11. 
(Sept. 27, 1885.) 

III. The Power of an Uncertain Future . 39 

" Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor 
the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." — Matthew 
xxv. 13. (Nov. 22, 1874.) 

IV. The Spiritual Struggle .... 61 

4 ' For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but 
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers 
of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked- 
ness in high places." — Ephesians vi. 12. (Sept. 14, 
1878.) 

V. The Battlements of the Lord . . 80 

" Take away her battlements, for they are not the 
Lord's." — Jeremiah v. 10. (Feb. 20, 1881.) 

VI. Christ Our Life ...... 99 

" In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up 
and walk." — Acts iii. 6. (May 1, 1887). 



IV CONTENTS. 

Sermon Page 

VII. My Brother's Keeper . . . . 115 
"Am I my brother's keeper?" — Genesis iv. 9. 
(Nov. 15, 1885.) 

VIII. Rest 133 

44 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy- 
laden, and I will give you rest." — Matthew xi. 28. 
(Oct. 12, 1890.) 

IX. The Material and the Spiritual. . 150 

44 And as he went out of the temple, one of his 
disciples saith unto him : Master, see what manner 
of stones and what buildings are here ! " — Mark 
xiii. 1. (June 10, 1877.) 

X. The Double Cause 167 

44 And his name through faith in his name hath 
made this man strong, whom ye see and know." 
— Acts iii. 16. (May 4, 1889.) 

XI. Go Into the City . . . . . 184 

44 Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told 
thee what thou must do." — Acts ix. 6. (Dec. 27, 
1874.) 

XII. The Holiness of Duty .... 199 

44 Wherefore the law is holy." — Romans vii. 12. 
(Nov. 12, 1876.) 

XIII. Peace which Passeth Understanding . 219 

44 The peace of God, which passeth all under- 
standing." — Philippians iv. 7. (April 23, 1876.) 

XIV. The Relative and the Absolute . . 236 

44 And there was also a strife among them, which 
of them should be accounted the greatest." — Luke 
xxii. 24. (Jan. 10, 1886.) 



CONTENTS. 

Sermon 

XV. The Strength of Consecration 

u And Samson said, Let me die with the Philis- 
tines. And he bowed himself with all his might ; 
and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all 
the people that were therein. So the dead which 
he slew at his death were more than they which 
he slew in his life." — Judges xvi. 30. (May 14, 
1876.) 

XVI. The Danger of Success 

" Verily I say unto you, They have their re- 
ward." — Matthew vi. 2. (April 12, 1874.) 



Page 

2 53 



273 



XVII. The Spiritual Man .... 294 

" But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet 
he himself is judged of no man." — 1 Corinthians 
ii. 15. (No date.) 



XVIII. Delight in the Law of God 

"I delight in the law of God." — Romans vii. 
23. (May 3, 1874.) 

XIX. The Ark of the Covenant . 

* ' And the ark of the covenant of the Lord 
went before them." — Numbers x. 33. (Dec. 19, 
1875.) 

XX. Sons of God 

" Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be." — 1 John 
iii. 2. (Oct. 10, 1875.) 

XXI. The Feast of Tabernacles . 

"And I that am the Lord thy God from the 
land of Egypt will yet make thee to dwell in 
tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn feast." 
— Hosea xii. 9. (Jan. 1, 1888.) 



311 



328 



346 



365 



THE LAW OF GROWTH. 



LAW OF GROWTH. 

*'For whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever 
hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to 
have." — Luke viii. 18. 

It is interesting to know, of any one whose char- 
acter and ways of thought we are studying, what 
words are oftenest upon his tongue. And it would 
seem as if this proverb, which I have just quoted 
from Him, were a favorite utterance of Jesus, v 
Three of the Evangelists record it, and the circum- 
stances with which they connect it are different. 
St. Matthew mentions two occasions on which 
Christ used the words. 

It would seem, then, as if the truth which these 
words record seemed to Christ very impressive and^ 
important. He found in it the occasion for the 
most earnest exhortation to faithfulness. Such a 
fact must deserve our best study and come very 
close to our life. Let us try to see what it is. 

* To him that hath shall be given, and from 
him that hath not shall be taken even that which 



2 LAW OF GROWTH 

he seemeth to have." In one case when Jesus used 
the proverb the parable of the talents had come just" 
before. The immortal picture was just fresh in the 
Disciples' minds, — the careful, prudent, faithful 
merchant, whose five talents had attracted five 
others, and turned themselves to ten; the poor, 
timid, helpless creature who brought his one talent, 
all caked and useless with the earth in which it had 
been lying. And while the people were listening 
with that suspicion of injustice, that uneasy sense 
of something wrong, which almost always comes 
when prosperity and misery, success and unsuccess, 
stand side by side, Jesus went on frankly to declare 
that the truth of the parable was a truth every- 
where ; that everywhere there was a law of growth,^, 
a law of accumulation and of loss, which drew more 
blessing where blessing was already, and condemned 
to decay that which had no real vitality. It was a 
sort of " survival of the fittest " declared to be ex- 
isting throughout the world. 

And, just as soon as such a truth is announced, 
there are a multitude of voices which proclaim how 
true it is. Many of them speak in bitterness and 
anger. Indeed, it is the taunt of every disappointed 
soul. "Look," he who has failed says, "look and 
see how everywhere the prosperous prosper and the 
unhappy attract unhappiness by a terrible affinity. , 
Behold how, when a man is rich, riches fly to his 
overloaded coffers of their own accord, while the 
poor man by his side grows poorer every day. Yes, 
it is true enough; let a man be going up and all the 
world hurries to help him ; let him begin to go 



LAW OF GROWTH 3 

down, and where is the friend that will not push 
him lower ? " So men speak with all the exaggera- 
tion of bitterness. Now, we want to leave out all 
the bitterness, for that is an element that never 
helps men to the truth. We shall see by and by 
whether the truth is one that ought to make us 
bitter. We want to stand now calmly and look 
over all the broad world, and see how true it is, — 
this centralization of blessing, this tendency of all 
privilege to attract other privilege. 

It appears in the distributions of business. H& 
who is fullest of work, he to whom the multitude 
are resorting to buy their goods, or to secure the 
building of their houses, is the man whom each new 
customer seeks out, while his neighbor sits with his 
tools around him, waiting for work which flows in a 
full stream past his doors, and lets no drop free to 
trickle in. It is true in learning. The more a man 
knows, the more the sources of learning open to him 
on every side. All the mouths of the world seem 
to be opened to tell him everything they know. 
The same is true of wealth. When a man reaches 
a certain point of wealth, his money reduplicates 
itself almost without his efforts, even drawing into 
itself the hard-earned profits of the toil of poorer 
men. And it is true of public favor. The man 
whom all are praising is the man whom all men praise. 
Popularity draws the eyes and voices of the crowd, 
and gathers with most unneeded profusion about 
some one or two people in the town. And of that 
far more sacred thing, Friendship, see how true it is. 
To him who has friends, friends are given. They 



4 LAW OF GROWTH 

come crowding up to claim some little fragment of 
the kindness of the much-loved man, leaving the 
other man, who has a whole heart to give away, 
with no one to ask him for it. 

Or think of usefulness. One man cannot walk 
anywhere but at his feet there start innumerable 
opportunities to help his fellow-men. Need flies to 
him, and if he had a hundred hands, and each day 
were a hundred hours long, he could not satisfy the 
opportunities for doing good which crowd themselves 
tumultuously upon him. And then, right in the 
resounding echoes of his busy work, you will find 
that other sight — always so sad ! — of one who wants 
to help his brethren, and round whose life there 
shuts a wall of uselessness, within which he can only 
sit and feed upon himself. 

Or think of health. The well man breathes it in 
from every breeze. The sick man feels every touch 
of the life-giving nature stealing what little life he 
has away. And so of healthiness of soul, — that 
cordial, fresh, and kindly interest in things which 
makes the joy of living. All the complications of 
life, all the touchings of life on life, are always 
pouring more of this red wine into the cup that is 
already full, while they make more morbid the soul 
that is filled with suspicion and discontent already. 
And so of enthusiasms and devotions. Your mind 
is full of an idea, your soul is given to a cause, and 
inspiration and encouragement flow in to you from 
every side. You find assurances that you are right 
and will succeed everywhere. Nature and man 
both become the prophets of your strong belief. 



LAW OF GROWTH 5 

But to your friend who, working with you, has no 
such faith as yours, all nature and all men have only 
voices of discouragement. All that comes to him 
frightens him. 

We might go on and catalogue everything that 
there is good and fine in human life. We make our 
theories of compensation and of equal distribution. 
We go on expecting that somehow, some time, ev- 
erything will be adjusted and equality proclaimed: 
the conditions are to be reversed ; the outs are to 
come in and the ins are to go out. We try to make 
it appear that everything is mechanically adjusted 
by what we call " impartial justice " every Saturday 
night, or at that great Saturday night of all which 
we call death. And all the time, underneath all 
our theories and expectations, breaking up through 
them constantly with its contradictions, there runs 
this vast law with its countless illustrations, — the 
law that the happy always tend to become happier, 
and the good better, and the wise wiser, and the 
rich richer, and the bad wickeder, and the fools 
more foolish, and the poor poorer. All the while 
to him that hath it is being given, and from him 
that hath not is being taken away that which he 
seemeth to have. 

And now what shall we say about this law ? In 
the first place, there can be no doubt that in the 
operation of the law there is wrought out the greater 
part of the picturesqueness and interest of human 
life. That which some amiable theorists delineate, 
and try to establish as the actual condition of things, 
would certainly make a very tame and monotonous 



6 LAW OF GROWTH 

world. The strong, emphatic characters and careers 
which, having much, are always drawing to them- 
selves more and more of the things which make life 
rich, — these certainly give to humanity a various 
strength and beauty which none of us, not even the 
humblest and the least endowed, would really be 
content to lose. Do you suppose that the obscure 
man who finds that everything like fame or notice 
drifts away from his life and gathers about the lives 
of one or two preeminent men of his time would 
really wish, in all his discontent, that all the world 
of reputation could be rolled level and no man be 
thought more of than any other man in the great, 
flat expanse of average existence ? I think not. 
There are — and it is one of the signs of goodness 
that there are — new emotions and sources of pleas- 
ure which come out and exercise themselves when a 
man finds that his is not to be one of the privileged 
points of human life. The pleasure and growth 
which come by admiration of what is greater than 
himself; the unselfish joy in helping to complete the 
good work of some one who is supremely qualified 
to do it ; the growing conviction that the world is 
richer for these concentrations of power which at 
first only excited jealousy, — all of these, which are 
among the truest and most cultivating pleasures 
which a man can have, become available to him 
who accepts and rejoices in the law which makes 
some lives supremely rich, even though his be not 
one of the rich but of the poor. The valley may 
wish it were the mountain up to which it gazes 
from its humble depth, but it would rather be the 



LAW OF GROWTH 7 

valley with the glorious mountain towering above 
it, and drinking in its sustenance from the moun- 
tain's side, than to have the whole earth rolled 
smooth, mountain and valley obliterated together 
in one indistinguishable level of dreary, barren plain. 

Believe me, my friends, there is something better 
for you to do than to accept the patent inequalities 
of life with forlorn resignation. There was never 
any champion of individuality like Jesus, and yet 
He recognized and found no fault with the law of 
privilege, the law by which wealth and culture and 
the patent forms of happiness flow together and 
collect in the rich lives of certain men. It is pos- 
sible for you, though a poor man, to take so wide a 
view of the world, and of your race, that you shall 
be thoroughly glad that some other men are rich. 
In conscious ignorance and inability to learn, you 
may delight to know that some man whom you see 
is very learned, and learns more and more every day. 
Nay, you may be very wretched, and yet have your 
wretchedness not deepened, but lightened, by the 
sight of some brother's life, into which happiness 
seems to have poured its most profuse abundance, 
and who goes singing under the windows of your 
sorrow. 

You have anticipated me, I know, in thinking 
that the perplexity and difficulty come when we 
apply our law to moral life, and find that goodness 
and badness also have the same principle of ac- 
cumulation. Then it is often very bewildering. 
There is a man who has the love of goodness in 
him. Something of the divine passion of holiness 



8 LAW OF GROWTH 

has touched him. He is very far indeed from per- 
fect, but he is a good man as distinct from a bad 
man. The direction of his life is set toward right- 
eousness. To him come trooping all good influences 
from all regions of the earth. Everything he reads 
and sees and does, everything that other people do 
to him or around him, seems to give him some new 
opportunity of good. The very temptations that 
beset him seem compelled to render up to him their 
strength, and help him to grow better. The world 
of things seems to have taken his goodness into its 
charge, to bring it to completeness. 

Close by his side, it may be, is another man, whom 
all the world calls bad. He does a good thing here 
and there, but the choice of his life is wickedness. 
The deeper dispositions which run under all the 
casual events are deliberately set toward sin. What 
is it that makes that man's life terrible to watch ? 
What is it that makes gradually gather in his 
own eyes a hopelessness that sometimes enrages 
him, and sometimes only serves him for an excuse ? 
Is it not the way in which everything that happens 
to him seems to increase his wickedness. The evil 
element in everything seems to fly to him. Out of 
the quietest scenes there rise up voices calling him 
to sin. If there is a bad man, he meets him. If 
there is a combination of circumstances which can 
bewilder faith and shake responsibility, it seems to 
gather around him. This is the way in which life 
easily comes to look to us like a great machine for 
making good people better and making bad people 
worse. It matters not that round the good man 



LAW OF GROWTH 9 

there do gather manifold temptations to be wicked, 
and round the wicked man come crowding the per- 
suasions to be good, — nay, the very subtlety with 
which goodness draws out of the worst temptation 
some ministry of grace, the dreadful ingenuity with 
which sin draws out of the best influences some 
provocation of evil, only makes the truth more 
manifest of how easy it is for the good to grow bet- 
ter and for the wicked to grow worse in this great, 
mysterious, fertile world. 

You wonder sometimes how men can believe in 
heaven and hell. My friends, the wonder is how, 
with this sight before them which I have described, 
men can help it. The belief in heaven and hell is 
but the carrying out into the long vista of eternity 
of what men see about them every day, — the law 
of spiritual accumulation and acceleration, the law 
by which sin and goodness increase each after its 
kind. The more clearly a man believes in the life 
to come, and thinks of it as under the same great 
moral forces that pervade this life, the more im- 
pressive grow to him its spiritual necessities. He 
believes in a mercy which runs beyond the grave; 
but unless it be a mercy which does what mercy 
never does now, and compels to goodness the soul 
refusing to be good, there still stretches out the 
possibility of a wickedness forever obstinate, and so 
forever wretched. 

But think of it, if you will, only as it concerns 
this present life. It would be impressive enough 
even if there were no life to come, this tendency of 
everything to make the good grow better and the 



IO LAW OF GROWTH 

evil worse. If the fact is as clear as I have stated 
it, then it must stand as one of those things, like 
the wind or the sunshine, of which it is quite un- 
necessary that we should spend our time in asking 
whether it ought to be, as we can see very plainly 
that it is. What we do need to ask is the value of, 
such a truth, so fundamental, so pervasive, set right 
into the midst of our life. How will it affect our 
living ? What good effects is it intended to pro- 
duce ? The answer to that question seems to me 
to be twofold. It will emphasize individuality ; and 
it will keep ever vivid the difference between right 
and wrong. Let us look at these, and see if they 
are not what the world very much needs. 

The emphasis of individuality, the conviction of 
a man's self as having a personal character and living" 
a personal life, is not this the thing the lack of which 
has made the weakest moments of all our lives ? 
There are two classes of sins, — those that come from 
our feeble yielding and those that come of our 
wanton obstinacy. Of the latter class we may say 
sometimes that they result from our exaggerated 
individuality. Really they come of our distorted 
and diseased individuality. But the other class 
comes surely from the absence of any strong sense 
of individual life at all. From the boy who catches 
his first oath from the lips of the boy three years 
older than himself, whose impressive age and ex- 
perience swallow up the personal responsibility of 
the admiring youngster by his side, on to the old 
man who dies rich, with a fortune that he has 
made by some of the conventional unrighteous- 



LAW OF GROWTH II 

nesses — where is the trouble in it all ? Is it not in 
the feebleness of the boy's and the man's conception 
of himself? Duty, duty, that great, personal idea, 
something that he owes to God, something that he 
must do, whatever anybody or everybody beside 
him in the world may do, — that has not taken hold 
of him. He knows nothing about it. If he gets 
deep enough to have any philosophy about it all, 
his whole philosophy will be this, — that goodness 
and wickedness, like happiness or unhappiness, 
come by chance, that neither is to be struggled 
after or avoided. 

Oh, it is terrible to think how full our streets and 
houses are of that philosophy ! The man you do 
your business with, the friend you take your pleas- 
ure with, the brother or sister with whom you live 
in the same house, it is terrible to think how all 
moral life seems to him an accident, that it is as 
perfectly uncertain whether he will be noble or base 
to-morrow as whether the wind will blow east or 
blow west. There can be no strong sense of per- 
sonality there. There personal life resolves itself 
into a bundle of tastes, and the man recognizes 
himself only by what he likes or hates. But now 
suppose that man can come into our law. Growing 
cognizant of moral life, trying to be a good man or 
coming to know himself a bad man, he finds all the 
world declaring a disposition towards him, helping 
him on in the way which he has chosen. He has 
called it a world of accidents, and thought himself 
its puppet. But the minute he makes any moral 
declaration of himself he finds the world all devoting 



12 LAW OF GROWTH 

itself to the fulfilment of that declaration, all 
tending to make him more and more what he has 
set out to be. He has been floating on the waves, 
tossed where they pleased to toss him, but the 
minute that he says, M I will go thither," and be- 
gins to swim, the water under him becomes his 
helper; it lifts him up and floats him; it answers to 
the beating of his hands; it bears him on and lands 
him where he wants to be. Now that is thoroughly 
personal. It cannot be anything else. A man 
setting a moral destiny before himself, and feeling 
the whole current and power of things immediately 
bearing him on to it, must come to the certainty 
that he is a self-determined being and that God 
helps his self-determination. 

Oh, my dear friend, this is what you want. In 
your parlor, at your club, you are losing yourself, 
you are losing your soul, you are getting to seem to 
yourself the mere creature of accidents. What do 
you need ? Go and undertake some duty. Go and 
be moral. Go and be good. Go and find the soul 
that you have lost. Go, and in the midst of your 
self-indulgent life surprise yourself by doing what 
perhaps you have not done for years, — by doing 
something that you ought to do because you ought to 
do it. As you enter that moral region you have no 
idea of the revolution that will come in all these 
accidents and their relation to your life. It will 
be as if a general had forgotten his generalship, and 
gone to playing games and running races with his 
soldiers, who have forgotten it, too. But by and 
by the bugle sounds, and he recalls himself. He 



LAW OF GROWTH 1 3 

flings his play aside, and arms him for the battle. 
And then they, too, reverence him again, and cry, 
"Oh, let us help you, for we are only your servants 
as soon as you have really undertaken to be worthy 
of yourself. " So all the world will help you as soon 
as you try to do your duty. When you claim your 
manhood it will own your manhood, and you, who 
have counted yourself a mere playfellow of the 
blind chances of the world, will find yourself recog- 
nized by the world as a true moral creature, to 
whom it is commissioned, by the God who made it, 
to render its humble help in working out your 
moral life. 

I said, again, that the truth which Jesus empha- 
sizes so, and on which we have been dwelling, is of 
value because it keeps ever vivid the difference be- 
tween right and wrong. The idea that out of the 
mass of influences about us the good character ap- 
propriates the elements which belong to it, so that 
it grows ever better, and the bad character appro- 
priates its own elements and grows ever worse — 
that seems to me to be one of the most profoundly 
impressive declarations of what essentially different 
things the good and evil are. I take two seeds 
which look so much alike that only the skilled eye 
can tell the difference between them. I plant them 
side by side in the same soil. Immediately each of 
them sends out its summons. Each demands of the 
ground the elements of growth which its peculiar 
nature craves. The earth hears and acknowledges 
the summons, and renders up to each what it de- 
mands. So two men, who seem just alike, are set 



14 LAW OF GROWTH 

down in the same city. Instantly to one there fly 
all the influences of good ; to the other there gather 
all the powers of evil that pervade that city's life. 
Or, into a man's life is dropped a purpose. That 
purpose instantly declares its character by the way 
in which it divides the forces of his life. If it is 
good, it calls all that is good within him or around 
him to its aid. All that is noble gives its strength 
willingly to this new, feeble plan. All that is slug- 
gish, base, selfish, in his nature or his circumstances 
sets itself against his new desire. 

It is in such discriminations that the essential 
differences of the qualities of the good and bad dis- 
play themselves. In the least atom of good there 
lies a power to attract goodness and repel wicked- 
ness. In the least atom of wickedness there lies ar 
power to repel the good and to attract the bad. 
That is the qualitative power of moral natures. 
Ah, when we think how everywhere we are imposed 
upon by quantities, do we not need, do we not wel- 
come, this strong statement, that the real power of 
things lies in their qualities — in what they really 
are, whether there be much of them or little ? See 
how we are deluded. We take some vice which, in 
its larger manifestations, we know is flagrant and 
destructive. We make it small. Without chan- 
ging its character in the least, we bring down its 
dimensions. We turn the great public cheat into 
the little personal deception; we transform the 
large, insulting slander into base, personal, gossiping 
detraction; and what was acknowledgedly bad on 
the large scale is accepted as graceful and venial in 



LAW OF GROWTH I 5 

its smallness. Or, just the opposite: we take some 
action which in its petty forms everybody owns to 
be bad and mean, like the bullying of the weaker 
by the stronger, and, lifting it to a higher degree, we 
crown it with dignity and honor, as when we glorify 
the oppressor and the tyrant. Oh, we do need 
everywhere more of that conscientiousness which 
looks at the qualities, less of that superficialness 
which is overcome by the mere quantities of things. 

The other side of this is to me even more impres- 
sive. If we lose sight of the essential nature of evil 
very often by dwelling upon the increase or diminu- 
tion of its size, so that the very great or the very 
little evil seems to us to be almost absolutely good, 
the same is true about the quality of goodness. 
There, too, we are imposed upon by quantity till 
we forget that quality alone is vital. If we could 
all see, and always see, the essential force which is 
in every good act, however slight it is, and in every 
true belief, however meagre it is, how different our 
lives would be! But our goodness and our faith 
grow very small ; and, instead of valuing all the more 
intensely what is left, our ordinary impulse is to 
throw the remnant away. It is so little, we think, 
that it is not worth the keeping. 

Suppose that out of the world there should be 
slowly or suddenly destroyed all the seed of corn 
except one handful, just so much as one man could 
hold in his palm. Can you picture to yourself the 
care with which that handful would be guarded ? 
Can you imagine the interest that would gather 
about it, the poetry and dearness that would be in 



l6 LAW OF GROWTH 

it; how men, looking at it and knowing it to be the 
real thing, — true, real corn, — would see in it the as- 
surance of days yet to come when all the fields 
should wave once more with harvests ? That is the 
way in which you ought to treasure your faith if 
there is not much of it, if little by little it has 
slipped away from you. You say it has grown to 
be very little. You say that many things which 
you used to believe seem to you no longer to be 
true. You stand holding in your hand the remnant 
of a faith. What then ? Is it real ? Is it true 
faith ? Whether it be little or great, do you really 
believe it ? If you do, then surely that belief ought 
to be very precious to you. A little, a very little, 
belief it may be, — nevertheless treasure it because 
it is belief, instead of despising it because it is 
little. Value it for itsr quality, instead of dis- 
honoring it for its quantity. As you look into it(/ 
behold its possibilities. See in its meagreness the 
promise and power of a great and manifold belief 
that may yet some day cover your whole life with 
verdure. Put it where it will be safe ; and the only 
place where a faith ever can be safe is in the shrine 
of an action. Put it there. Do what that belief 
would tempt you and command you to do; and 
trust to its true quality to grow under the care of 
God, who knows in heaven every particle of true 
faith that there is scattered about the earth. In 
His sight it is all too precious to forget. 

What a great many people need to-day is to for- 
get for a while their care about the quantity of their 
belief, and to give their anxious attention to its 



LAW OF GROWTH 1 7 

quality. Not, how much do I believe ? but, how do 
I believe ? It is well worth while for you to learn 
to ask that deeper question. Seek reality, even 
though it be by casting aside much that you have 
carried about with you that was unreal. It is a 
glad day for a true man when at last he plucks off 
and casts away a faith which he has not believed, or 
a hypocritical habit which has not been truly his. 
" Coming down to reality," he calls it. It really is 
coming up to reality. The fresh, strong, hopeful 
future opens before him. 

Of every other experience that is true which I 
have been stating thus about belief. You need to 
learn, when you hear Christ your Master insisting 
on repentance, on love for Himself, on love for 
fellow-man, on devoted work, that His desire is, 
first of all and deepest of all, for the qualities of 
those things. He wants a real repentance, a real 
love, a real devotion. If He sees reality, we can 
well understand how He can be infinitely patient 
with littleness ; for where He stands eternity is all 
in sight. He sees forever. He knows through 
what summer of cloudless sunshine the least grace 
will have time to ripen to the richest. He knows 
in what rich fields the seed will find eternal lodg- 
ment. So there is time enough, if only the seed is 
real. If it is not real, eternity is not long enough 
and heaven is not rich enough to bring it to any- 
thing. 

How impressive this is in the story of Christ's 
earthly life! How patient He was with imperfec- 
tion! How intolerant He always was of unreality ! 



1 8 LAW OF GROWTH 

He could wait for a publican while he unsnarled 
himself out of the meshes of his low vocation, but 
He cut with a word like a sword through the solemn 
trifling of the Pharisees. He never was impatient 
with His disciples. Their graces were very small, 
but they were real. Eternity was long, and He 
could wait till the graces which He saw to be real 
opened into all the possibility which He discerned 
in them; till the Peter who paraded his genuine 
but feeble resolution of devotion at the Supper 
grew to the Peter who could die for Him at Rome, 
and live with Him in some high doing of His will 
in heaven. 

It is good for us if we can treat ourselves as our 
Lord treats us. Try to find out whether your re- 
pentance for sin is real — a genuine sorrow for a 
wrong life. If it is, no matter if it falls far short of 
the complete contrition which you picture to your- 
self, still keep it, hold it fast. Do not let it slip 
away and drop back into the placid content which 
you felt before you were penitent at all. So with 
your love to your Saviour, — do not throw it away 
because it is not that large-winged devotion which 
soars up into the very sunshine of His closest com- 
pany. Keep it. Feed it on all you know of Him. 
Never trifle with it, or surround it with any un- 
reality of profession merely to make it seem larger 
than it is. Reverence it, not because it is great 
enough to be worthy of Him, but because for such 
a being as you are to love at all such a being as 
He is, is a sublime act, — the glorification of your 
nature, and the promise of infinite growth. 



LAW OF GROWTH 1 9 

I long for every Christian, especially for every 
young Christian, to see this first Christian truth of 
the value of the essential qualities of things set 
deep into his life. Christ was full of it. Christ 
showed us how full God is of it. In it is the secret 
of endless patience. In it is the power of enthusi- 
asm at every stage of growth. Can the soul just 
come to Christ, just trembling with its first love, 
its first hope, lift up itself and sing enthusiastically ? * 
Yes, if it can know indeed that " to him which hath V 
shall be given," that it is in the very essential nature 
of the life it has begun to go on, and never stop, 
until it stands in the glory which is before the 
Throne of God. 

In the truth which Jesus taught, then, in the prov- 
erb which was so often on His lips, there lie still 
the warning and the inspiration which He put there. 
It is the truth of a live world, a world so full of 
life that into it nothing can fall without partaking 
of its life, a world that makes the good grow better 
and the bad grow worse always. Tf tJK y^ aa to 
making us worse, then not to change the world, but 
to be c hanged ourselves, is what we need. We 
must be regenerate by Christ, and then the world 
shall become His schoolroom, by all its ministries 
bringing us more and more perfectly to Him. May 
He give us His new life, that the world may become 
new to us ! 



II. 

HALF-LIFE. 

" Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look 
down from heaven." — Psalm lxxxv. n. 

Do not these words suggest the way in which one 
part of every life stands related to another part of 
the same life ? There is a heaven and an earth in 
every man ; first in his nature, then in his experience ; 
and it is on the cordial working together of these 
two parts of his life that the healthiness and com- 
pleteness of any man's existence depend. Think 
what these two parts are. The earth of every man's 
life is what we are apt to call, in our loose, super- 
ficial way, its practical part. It is that which has to 
do with the methods and machineries of his exist- 
ence. It is made up of numberless details. The 
house in which he lives, the food he eats, the busi- 
ness he pursues, the places where he travels, the 
dress he wears, the amusements in which he finds 
recreation, the daily plans by which his living is 
conducted, — these make the earth, the lower and 
terrestrial level of his life. All these would be 
altered to something different if — the same man 
still, with the same purposes and standards which 
he has now — he left the earth and went to live on 

20 



HALF-LIFE 21 

some star of other conditions than this familiar one 
of ours. 

And then, always over and around this world of 
methods and machines, as the sky is always over and 
around the earth, there is the world of purposes and 
standards, — the reasons why the man is doing these 
things, as distinct from the mere way in which he 
does them. To this world belong all the affections, 
all the calm or tumultuous passions out of which 
actions are fed, as the cornfields are fed out of the 
brooding or the hurrying clouds. To this world 
belong religion, all lofty and inspiring ideas, all 
great ambitions, all desire for culture, — everything 
which, unseen, is yet the motive and the force by 
which the visible activities of our lives are set and 
kept in motion. These make the heaven of our 
life. These would go on essentially the same in 
any other star. They are not dependent on the 
conditions of the earth. They would inspire other 
conditions if these present ones should be removed. 

Are you not aware of these two regions in your 
life ? As, standing on some great mountain, you 
feel the solid ground under your feet, and see the 
sweep of landscape, mountain, and lake and plain 
and river all around you ; and then, over all, the 
sky, separate from the earth, yet making one system 
with it, living in closest relation with it, and meet- 
ing it all round at the horizon, — do you not know 
these two worlds in your life, the world of method 
and the world of motive, the world of deed and the 
world of thought, the world of embodiment and 
the world of inspiration, the world of what and the 



22 HALF-LIFE 

world of why — the earth and the heaven, may we 
not call them? — which make up together the total 
system of your life ? 

And now the suggestion of our text is that, in 
order for a human life to be complete, both of these 
two worlds must be active and both of them must 
be true. If either of them is inactive, or if either 
of them is false, the life is a failure. Truth must 
spring out of the earth and righteousness must look 
down from heaven. The different failures to which 
men's different lives do really come are the result 
of the different ways in which these two worlds do 
not work, or work falsely, or do not work in har- 
mony. Let us study this a little while, and I think 
we shall see that it is no mere theory, but the simple 
story of what is going on always in the world. 

The easiest and most obvious illustration of our 
truth, that which must let us see immediately what 
it means, appears in what we call the fine arts. 
There the two worlds are most distinct, and the 
need of their harmonious cooperation is most mani- 
fest. You go into a sculptor's workshop, and how 
evident the lower world, the world of method, is! 
The tools that lie around, the hard, clear block of 
marble, the model in the clay, the evident need of 
technical skill which can only have come by practice 
with the most concrete and tangible of things, — all 
that is clear. But how the whole place loses its 
character, and is nothing but a mechanic's factory 
unless, behind what you see, you are clearly aware 
of the unseen ; unless the place is full of presences, 
of visions and ideas, of thoughts of beauty which 



HALF-LIFE 23 

are to be embodied in forms of beauty through the 
means of all this visible matter and this technical 
skill. Here are two worlds; and evidently both of 
them are necessary, or you have no sculpture and 
no sculptor. Leave out the world of method, and 
you have only a dreamer left, who thinks of statues 
and never carves a stone. Leave out the world of 
motive, and you have only an artisan, who cuts 
statues as another artisan cuts doorsteps, with no 
vision, no meaning, no idea to make them live. 
Both worlds must be there and both must be true. 
Falseness in either ruins the result. You must have 
purity, loftiness, and truth in the conception which 
you want to embody, and you must have simplicity, 
straightforwardness, and reality, freedom from arti- 
ficialness and trick, in the technique by which you 
work, or you make nothing worthy of the name of 
statue. Given these two, — truth in the world of 
imagination and idea, and truth in the world of exe- 
cution, — and then the Venus of Milo or the Dying 
Gladiator comes. 

We have not, most of us, to carve statues, but we 
have all of us to live lives ; and so I turn at once to 
see how this our truth applies, not to a special art, 
fine or coarse (though it does apply to them all), 
but to the general conduct of a life. And it seems 
to me that the result to which our thought about it 
brings us is this : that there are four kinds of men — 
four kinds of characters, three of them weak and 
imperfect, one of them complete and strong — who 
may be conceivably produced by the imperfect or 
the perfect relations of these two worlds to one 



24 HALF-LIFE 

another. All of these four kinds of men are actually 
produced and live among us. Let us describe them 
to ourselves, and try to learn some of their lessons. 

I said, then, that both of the worlds, the world 
of motive and the world of method, as I called them, 
must be active in every man, and that they must 
work in harmony with one another, to make the 
perfect man. You will see at once where the im- 
perfect kinds of men will come from. There will 
evidently be: 1st, the men in whom the world of 
motive is alive, but not the world of method; 2d, 
the men in whom the world of method is alive, but 
not the world of motive; and 3d, the men in whom 
both worlds are at work, but work on different prin- 
ciples and keep no harmony with one another. 

1. How common the first kind of defect is, we all 
know, I am sure, only too well. We see it in our 
brethren ; we feel it in ourselves. Wherever a man 
lets himself be satisfied with ardent aspirations which 
never go forth in deeds, or with admiration of good- 
ness which does not utter itself in some struggle for 
the increase of goodness in the world, have we not 
got exactly this : Righteousness looking down from 
heaven, but no truth springing out of the earth to 
meet it ? How long she may lean over the golden 
walls, and look and look in vain down to the dull, 
unresponsive earth ! You let your mind dwell upon 
the misery of poverty, the wretchedness and terrible 
temptations of the poor, — how dreadful, how mys- 
terious are these inequalities of human life; the 
advantages of one, the disadvantages of another! 
How rich the opportunity, how pressing the neces- 



HALF-LIFE 2$ 

sity that they who have should give not merely 
money, but time and thought and sympathy, in help 
of these others who have not ; that the rich and happy 
should freely bestow themselves on the poor and 
wretched! Your soul is filled with these ideas. It 
not merely is filled with them ; it glows with them. 
The theory is perfect. The conviction is complete. 
And then comes the demand for action. The poor 
man stands before your door. The special problem 
clamors for solution. And where are you ? You 
have stopped short upon the borders of your theory, 
and are loitering in the mists of your enthusiasm, 
and all the need of vigorous action cries out for you 
in vain. 

Or take a case that concerns only your own per- 
sonal life. You have some vice, some bad way of 
living, and who is there so clear and cogent as you 
are to reason about it ? Who will so clearly show 
its evil origin, its mischievous result ? Who will be 
so earnest in praise of the man who with a manly 
resolution breaks the chains of this bad habit, and 
in spite of all the pain which the struggle costs him 
goes out free ? And yet you go back over and over 
again to your abused and detested habit, and the 
new years as they come one after another find you 
still its slave. 

I am telling a most familiar story. It is what we 
have all seen and felt all our lives. It is the old 
story of unfulfilled purposes and enthusiasms that 
disappear like dreams. The world is ready with 
its explanation. It always makes its easy ex- 
planations of complicated situations, and is quite 



26 HALF-LIFE 

sure that they are right. The world cries out, 
" Hypocrisy ! " It believes that the enthusiastic 
purpose which failed before it came to action was 
unreal. It laughs at the brave young reformer who 
was going to renew the world, and whose sword is 
missing when the battle morning breaks, and says, 
" You see there was nothing in his boasting. He 
meant nothing. It was all insincere." 

The world is wrong. The problem is by no 
means such an easy one as that. There is such a 
thing as hypocrisy, of course ; but the chance is that 
this is not hypocrisy. It is half-life. It is life only 
in the world of motive and not in the world of 
method. It is righteousness looking down from 
heaven without truth springing out of the earth. 
These high enthusiasms are thoroughly real, per- 
fectly sincere. It is simply that these men live in 
the region of emotion and idea, and very probably 
the lower world of action seems almost contempt- 
ible to them. They almost despise it. It belongs 
to lower souls. Their part in life is loftier. 

No doubt, in time, this partial life tends to be- 
come unreal even in the part of it which does exist. 
An unused conviction always tends to insincerity. 
But it is real enough as it glows upon the lips of 
the young enthusiast — this outcry of high motive 
which never lays a finger to the tasks it paints so 
glowingly. The experience of how much there is 
of it in the world is what makes sad and pathetic 
the sight and sound of the college, full of high 
thoughts of life, and the hosts of brave young 
thinkers there, kindling with the reading of great 



HALF-LIFE 27 

books and looking as if they could not wait for 
graduation day to save the world. 

2. With this sort of failure in your mind turn 
suddenly and look at another which is just its oppo- 
site. Here is the man who lives only in the other 
world, the world of method. As he of whom we 
have been speaking never came forward out of the 
region of enthusiasm into the region of action, so 
this man never allows the region of action to have 
any background of enthusiasm. That the thing 
should be done is everything. That there should 
be a fine, high, spiritual reason why it should be 
done is nothing. Such men, I sometimes think, 
have grown most common in our time. They are 
of every occupation. There are professors very 
learned, very faithful, very skilful in all the techni- 
cal details of teaching, who will grow silent or grow 
scornful if you suggest the higher, the religious, 
purposes of learning, the duty to one's own nature, 
to society, to God, which constitute the ultimate 
reason why one should be learned at all. There are 
business men, honest and charitable and intelligent 
to a degree which fills the whole business world in 
which they move with light, who are utterly be- 
wildered if you bid them think of the relation of 
business to the Brotherhood of Man and to the Re- 
demption by Jesus of the earth into completeness as 
the Kingdom of God. There are philanthropists 
the inspiration of whose philanthropy never gets 
above the economics of alms-giving and the waste- 
fulness of poverty. There are politicians enough 
to whom the state is a great machine of wonderful 



28 HALF-LIFE 

complexity and fineness, but with no divine pur- 
pose, no possibility of character. Nay, strangest of 
all, there are religious men and women who, above 
all things, would guard religion from becoming 
overspiritual. Ask them why they are religious, 
why they go to church, why they say prayers, why 
they send missionaries to the heathen, why they 
read the Bible, and they will give you dry and 
dreary answers about religion being a natural crav- 
ing of the human soul; or, drearier still, about its 
being so helpful to the order of society. Not one 
word of eager and impulsive utterance of the child's 
yearning for the Father's love, or of the sinner's 
gratitude for the Saviour's glorious salvation ! All 
is of the earth: nothing is of the heaven. It is 
faithfulness, intelligence, truth, springing up from 
below, not looking down from above. 

I know and I think that I value fully the better 
feeling which is mixed up with all of this. I know 
the dread of vagueness and sentimentality. I know 
the impatience with tiresome gush and enthusiasm 
that fail when it comes to work, the contempt for 
the mere pretence of lofty purpose, which by and 
by cries out, " Let motive go, and simply do your 
work. What the world wants is that the students 
should be taught, the asylum founded, the railroad 
built, the Church service maintained." All that is 
very natural, and also very shallow. Because there 
is sentimentality, no man has a right to disown the 
power of true sentiment. Because there is hypocrisy, 
what right has any man to say he never will be en- 
thusiastic ? Because the sky breeds fogs, does that 



HALF-LIFE 29 

give any man the right to build the low roof ten feet 
over his head, and live in his poor cabin as if there 
were no mystery of sky beyond ? Because fanatics 
have had their heads turned by the Book of the 
Revelation, must you abolish the vision of the New 
Jerusalem from the vistas of your life ? 

The danger which comes with such a fault and 
folly is manifest enough. Let it grow to be the 
habit of the world ; let great, enthusiastic motives 
cease to be felt as the inspirations of the world's 
activity, and sooner or later that activity must lose 
its quality of faithfulness; and even while it main- 
tains that quality, and while men keep on working 
hard without any supply from the most profound 
depths and the loftiest heights of their natures, still 
their work must lose its breadth, and degenerate 
into tricks and artifices. This is what, I think, we 
have to fear more than anything to-day: — not a 
loss of the intensity of industry, but a loss of the 
nobility of industry; work done upon the lower 
and not upon the higher plane, and so not rendering 
the best result to the worker, nor giving the largest 
inspiration to the progress of the world ; business 
done sordidly, government conducted mechanically, 
learning gained and given mercenarily, religion prac- 
tised formally, life in general relying for its im- 
pulses upon the needs which spring out of the earth, 
not upon the inspirations which come down from 
heaven. May God save us from these things, and 
preserve for us and in us not merely the activity, 
but the nobility of labor and of life! 

3. I have depicted two kinds of failure. Let me 



30 HALF-LIFE 

say a few words about a third, which is less simple, 
more subtle than these two. I have spoken of the 
man who lives only in the region of his affections and 
enthusiasms, in the world of motive, and leaves the 
world of method and action unattempted ; and then 
of the other man who lives only in the lower world, 
and will not meddle with enthusiasms and high im- 
pulses at all. There is another man, as I suggested, 
in whom both worlds are active, but in whom they 
work contradictorily and will not keep time with 
one another. 

Have you never known the man with two con- 
sciences ? Have you never known the man with 
the higher and the lower conscience ? One of the 
consciences was active in the region of his specula- 
tions and emotions, the other in the region of his 
practical, active life, and they were hostile each to 
each. They were both consciences. They both 
were based on the idea of duty, but they were set 
in opposition to each other, and confusion was the 
result. One or two instances will illustrate my 
meaning. 

Here is a man who, in the higher region of life, 
has accepted the duty of Humility. The more he 
reasons, the more he sets himself in the presence of 
the sublimest truths, the more he always is aware 
that to be humble is the only worthy position for a 
man all full of weakness and defect. He has stood 
in the sight of God, and felt how insignificant he is. 
He has looked the possibilities of his own life in the 
face and been ashamed of what he is beside what 
he might be. " I must be humble, " he has said; 



HALF-LIFE 3 1 

M what right have / to boast ? My only chance for 
any comfort is in owning frankly to myself and 
everybody else what a poor thing I am." 

Now, that is perfectly honest and sincere. The 
man in his closet says that to God and to himself 
with all his heart. And then he goes out from his 
closet to his business. The world lays claim to 
him. Tangible things to do, concrete questions to 
answer, meet him on every hand. Do you not 
know how often a new sense of duty comes up in 
the street, which is different from that which filled 
the closet ? What can a humble man do in scenes 
like these ? Has a man a right to be humble here 
where self-confidence is the first element of strength ? 
Does not humility mean self-obliteration ? And so 
the man who, when he thought abstractly, philo- 
sophically, and religiously, accepted the obligation of 
humility, when he comes to act practically and con- 
cretely, finds it his duty to be proud. In the same 
way, the duty of trust and confidence and cordial 
faith in man seems to be met in common life by the 
counter-duty of suspicion. " I have no right," says 
the confiding man, " in this world of wickedness, to 
indulge a faith in man which will only make me the 
victim of his wiles." In the same way, the man 
who, in the higher region, bids himself hope, forces 
on himself in common things the necessity of fear. 
So he who knows in general that man is meant to 
be tender and sensitive hardens himself with some 
base alloy when he goes among his brethren, as if so 
only he could be of any use. So the obligation of 
perfect truthfulness is met by the practical necessity 



32 HALF-LIFE 

of a limitation of candor which really is deceit, and 
which pleads for itself in the sacred names of pity 
and justice. 

You see what all this means. It is not simply 
that high motives melt and weaken when you try 
to put them into action. It is that the world of 
action seems to have different standards of duty 
from the world of thought. Those which seem im- 
perative in one appear impossible in the other. 
There are plenty of cases where we do not carry 
our religion into common life because we are cow- 
ardly or indolent or selfish. The real trouble comes 
when, being perfectly ready to carry our religion 
into common life, we dare not carry it there be- 
cause it seems as if our religion there would do not 
good, but harm ; because it seems as if that common 
life bred its own duties, and would not tolerate 
these that come down to it from above. There 
comes the deepest confusion. That is the real per- 
plexity in which multitudes of business men are 
struggling on year after year. When they first met 
the difficulty as young Christian clerks, it filled 
them with dismay. Since that they have long ago 
settled down into a dull hopelessness of its solution, 
and take it as a thing of course. But it is still the 
oppression of their lives. The heaven and the earth 
which are in them will not harmonize, and neither 
of them can they cast away, or bid to yield in abso- 
lute subjection to the other. 

4. And what then ? Is there any solution ? Is 
there any harmony of these two discordant parts of 
this one life? Is this third failure a hopeless failure? 



HALF-LIFE 33 

Must a man escape from partialness only to fall into 
confusion ? 

And this brings us to the positive which stands 
over against all these negatives — to the description 
of the sort of life which is not a failure, to which 
the study of these failure-lives must have been help- 
ing us. I wish that we could fill our minds at once 
with a picture which will bear witness to us of its 
own possibility of being realized. It is the picture 
of a man alive all through, from the summit to the 
foundation, in the celestial and the terrestrial por- 
tions of his life. It is the picture of a man who 
never thinks a high thought without instantly seek- 
ing to send it forth into its fitting action ; who never 
undertakes an active duty without struggling to set 
behind it its profoundest motive. He is one total 
man. The heavenly part of him is not vague be- 
cause it is so high ; and the earthly part of him, the 
lower part, is not counted wicked or contemptible. 
It knows its place, and, filling it completely, is full 
of dignity and peace. 

I say that such a picture, when we set it before 
our imagination, in some true sense proves itself. 
Our human nature, disappointed with many failures, 
recognizes its true idea, and says, " That is what 
I was meant to be!" And then, when we look 
earnestly around to see how we, in our personal 
life, may indeed come to be that, we find ourselves 
at once in contact with a truth to which we always 
are returning. That truth is, that whenever man 
thinks of himself as a composite being, a being made 
up of parts and therefore liable to inconsistency, 



34 HALF-LIFE 

liable to fall apart, he finds that he needs God 
for his power of coherence, he needs God for 
the element in which his inconsistency may be 
reconciled with itself and the whole nature find its 
harmony. Here, here alone, is where our three 
failures must disappear, and the only true success 
of human life come in their place. " The heaven 
is His throne; the earth also is His footstool," — 
let those words come to mean for us that there is 
no highest thought or emotion which is not subject 
to His will, and no least plan or action which does 
not rejoice to put itself at His feet; and then, in 
common obedience to Him, the discord between 
the higher and the lower life must disappear, and 
the whole man, as the child of God, be all one, and 
all alive. 

I turn to the character and the career of Jesus, 
and all of this is plain. That wonderful character 
and career may be summed up in many ways. It 
shapes itself ever into a new orb of beauty as one 
sees it ever from a new side. In our summary of 
it, may we not say that it represents the higher and 
the lower life of man, harmonized within the obe- 
dience of God ? It was because Jesus was always 
perfectly consecrated to His Father that the most 
exalted enthusiasm was never dissipated into a 
dream, and the simplest task was never degraded 
into a drudgery. We love to think how Jesus never 
intimated the least contempt for common things. 
Contempt for common things is apt to be the feeble 
and desperate resort of men who cannot keep them 
from intruding into an importance where they have 



HALF-LIFE 3$ 

no right, and so would tread them under foot and out 
of existence altogether. He who is in no danger of 
overvaluing them is prepared to give them their true 
value, and finds it easy. " These ought ye to have 
done, and not to leave the other undone.'* " Your 
Father knoweth that ye have need of these things." 
" Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His right- 
eousness, and all these things shall be added unto 
you." What a poise and balance there is in all 
those words! What an entire absence of contempt 
for common things! "The common is not wicked, ,, 
they declare, "only less and lower. Therefore it is 
not to be abolished, only kept in its true, second 
place." 

How different this voice is from that which has 
come from many of the seekers after spirituality in 
all religions and in every time ! All asceticism tries 
to increase the exaltation of the higher life by de- 
faming and astfar as possible abolishing the lower, 
which is as if you tried to make the sky loftier by 
destroying the earth and doing away with the hori- 
zon. Or if asceticism recognizes that the total man 
must be made up of heaven and earth together, it 
finds the fulfilment of this necessity in the general 
humanity. Let a few men and women, priests, 
monks, nuns, what we will call Religious people, 
live the spiritual life ; and let the rest of men do the 
plain duties of their ordinary stations; and so the 
race, as a great whole, will be complete. Each part 
will see fulfilled in the other part that which it can- 
not fulfil in itself. To think that each man can live 
in the heaven and the earth at the same time is a 



36 HALF-LIFE 

delusion. Against all that, Christ's life and words 
and work are a perpetual protest. He bids each 
man be entire. He says to every one: This you 
must do and yet not leave the other undone. All 
His New Testament is full of that. Strange, that 
with the great Christian Book so clear about it, the 
old false division — the assignment of the heavenly 
life alone to one set of men, and of the earthly alone 
to another set of men — should have so fastened 
itself in Christianity! 

You say, indeed, — how men are always saying it! 
how terribly familiar it has grown! — you say, " I 
am not spiritual; I cannot be. My possibilities on 
that side are very small; somebody must do my 
spirituality for me. Enough for me if I can creep 
through the common tasks of common life with 
decency.' ' Of such talk from anybody let us make 
little account. We make less and less account of 
it, I think, the longer that we know our fellow-men. 
At any rate, however much it may mean when a 
kind man uses it about his brother-man, making for 
him such excuse as seems possible, any man ought 
to be ashamed to use it in self-excuse about himself. 

The truth is, my dear friends, for any man in this 
short fragment of a life of ours to dare to think or 
say that he has understood the limits of his possi- 
bilities is worse than folly. It is almost blasphemy. 
What do you think of the boy that stands up at the 
age of ten, and looks you in the eye, and says that, 
as he has found he has no faculty for language, he 
proposes to deal with his language-books no longer ? 
Do you not bid him learn a little self-respect and 



HALF-LIFE 37 

modesty together, and send him back speedily to 
his grammar and dictionary ? And we are not 
children of ten yet in our long life of immortality! 
Before us stretches so far away the long experience, 
so dim, so calm, so certain, so certainly full of richer 
conditions and a perpetual development of this 
mysterious humanity of ours. What will you say 
to the pert little man who stands up sharp in the 
midst of the concrete trifles of his busy life, and 
says, "Oh, I cannot be spiritual. I have no faculty 
of prayer. It is impossible for me to find God, or 
even to seek after Him." Will you not say, " Be 
more modest, and so have more respect for your- 
self! Go back to your closet and your Bible, and 
do not dare to say what possibilities God has put 
into that nature of yours, which He made, till you 
are older, a great deal older than you are now; yea, 
till you are old as eternity! " 

Think of the other tone. Think of the man who 
says, " So long as I live, until eternity shall end, I 
never will cease to hope that out of the depths of 
my nature, hopeless as it seems, may open the 
power to be that which, as I have seen it in the best 
souls among my race, is the best thing that a man 
can be — a lover of God, and a dweller with Him 
among heavenly thoughts and motives.' ' When a 
man is saying that with all his heart, then how 
ready he is for the words of Jesus: " He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father.' ' " No man cometh 
unto the Father but by Me." Then comes, " I 
will go to Him, to Christ, and find God! How 
long, how slow, how hard the journey through Him, 



38 HALF-LIFE 

through Christ, to God may be, I do not know ; but 
henceforth, in this world and in whatever world may 
lie beyond, I will go on and on and on through 
Christ to God." With that determination made, 
with that journey begun, eternity is not too long; 
nor has this world, nor any other, the temptation 
which can turn the man aside from his eternal search. 
O, you who have begun that search, be content, 
for at the last it must succeed. O, all of you, be 
sure that life is not really life for you until you have 
begun that search for God through Christ! Be sure 
that when through Christ you have found God, then, 
and not till then, will the harmony of your whole 
life, totally submitted in all its parts to Him, be 
perfect ; then in you shall this great text which we 
have studied now so long be perfectly fulfilled : 
*' Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteous- 
ness shall look down from heaven! " 



III. 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN 
FUTURE. 

" Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour 
wherein the Son of man cometh." — Matthew xxv. 13. 

JESUS spoke these words at the close of the Para- 
ble of the Ten Virgins. The people were still under 
the impression that the parable had made upon 
them. It is the air of expectancy that pervades it 
which gives the parable its character. It all looks 
forward. It is busied with the future, not the past. 
The waiting virgins, the sleepless eyes, the well- 
filled lamps, and then the hurried stir, the rustling 
garments, the passing voices, and the opening and 
closing doors, — all the movement is expectant, and 
is full of one idea : Be ready, for a future is coming 
— new issues — new destinies — new duties. Forget 
the past ! Look forward ! 

That is the tone of the parable, and it is the tone 
of the Gospel always. Stretching out into an infin- 
ite distance, it shows the endless future of human 
life. It lays its hand upon every soul that is asleep 
and says, " Wake, for your work is not done yet." 
New developments of truth, new perfections of 

39 



40 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

character, and infinite plans of God in which we are 
to take part, — these are the burden of the Gospel, 
and of the spirit of these the Parable of the Ten 
Virgins is full. It is all alive with expectancy. It 
is a parable of the Future. ' Behold the Bride- 
groom cometh ! " 

There are times, I think, when this character of 
the Gospel seems hard and almost cruel to us. 
There are times when the thought of expectancy 
is oppressive. Sometimes the soul is simply weary, 
and wants to lie down and go no farther. It seems 
to have done enough, to have lived enough. There 
is much in the past which is precious to it, but the 
thought of going on and making new history for it- 
self is dreadful to it. Life seems behind it. To 
turn and see that life is yet before it seems very 
hard. But always the Gospel keeps its character. 
It will allow no resting in the past or in the present. 
It is always holding up its future and insisting that 
its disciples should live in *' the power of an endless 
life." 

But this verse of warning which comes at the end 
of the parable has one special point. It brings out 
one kind of power in the anticipations of the fu- 
ture which is very striking. " Watch," Jesus says, 
" not merely because there is to be a future, but 
because you cannot know what the future is. 
Watch, for you know neither the day nor the hour 
wherein the Son of man cometh." Here is a sort of 
life enjoined — watchfulness. I hope w r e shall see 
clearly enough before we are done that watchfulness 
is not a single act, nor a special habit, but a whole 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 41 

new character of a man's life. And this character 
of a whole life is represented as coming out of the 
fact that the future of the life is uncertain. There 
is one sort of life that a man will live who antici- 
pates no future at all, who lives wholly in the pres- 
ent. There is another sort of life for the man whose 
future is all clear before him, all ticketed and dated. 
There is yet another life for the man who knows 
that larger and stranger things are coming than he 
comprehends, who expects surprises. I want to 
speak of this last kind of life. Our subject is "The 
Power of an Uncertain Future.' ' " Watch, there- 
fore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour 
wherein the Son of man cometh." 

We have one illustration of our subject always 
before us in the life of childhood. I suppose that 
it would not be possible to get a better idea of what 
Jesus meant by the watchfulness that would become 
the character of one who was always looking for His 
undated coming, than we should have if we could 
understand perfectly the strong and subtle influence 
which the uncertainty and apparent infiniteness of 
the life before him has upon a child. The alert- 
ness, the receptivity, the modesty, the eagerness 
and easy enlargement or readiness for great things, 
which belong to the best childhood, seem to me to 
be the very qualities which the Gospel is always try- 
ing to make in Christians, and all these qualities 
belong essentially to the uncertainty with which a 
child's future hovers before his eyes. If you could 
take a very high average of human attainment, 
something considerably beyond what the majority 



42 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

of men have reached, and fix that as the uniform 
level of men's accomplishment, if you could decree 
absolutely that every life should go just as far as 
that and no life should go any farther, you certainly 
would have taken the spring out of the ambition of 
very many young aspiring souls. You would have 
taken away the uncertainty, and so you would have 
destroyed the romance and attractiveness. Prob- 
ably not half of them will reach that line, but 
probably those who do reach it will go beyond it 
if you do not set them a limit there, but leave them 
all infinity to aspire into. One will certainly shoot 
his arrows higher if he shoots them out-of-doors, 
with all the sky to shoot them into, than if he sends 
them up against the ceiling of a room that seems 
just as high as he can reach. 

And so it is the child's uncertainty about his life 
that gives it all those characteristics that I spoke of. 
He does not know which way it will go. It is full 
of wonderment. Every door tempts him to open 
it, to see what lies beyond. Every corner tempts 
him to turn it. And so, just as you or I, going to 
Paris or London, will walk more in a day than any 
Londoner or Parisian in three, because our curiosity 
is always kept alive by the uncertainties of the un- 
familiar streets, — so the child will make more char- 
acter in a week than we grown people will in 
months, because life, not having yet hardened itself 
into routines and certainties, is always vividly inter- 
esting to him and is always enticing him a little 
farther on. 

There must be grown men, old men, here to-day, 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 43 

who look back to nothing with such wistful longing 
as to the interest that life had for them when they 
were children. Can it be, indeed, that this dull and 
faded thing is the same that once flashed and 
sparkled with such bewitching colors? Living has 
disenchanted them with life. And if they look into 
it they will see that what has gone out of life is 
simply its uncertainty. They have solved all the 
problems. They have opened all the closets. Once, 
when they got up in the morning, they wondered 
what they would do that day; they thought of a 
thousand things that might happen before the sun 
went down. Now, they know just what will hap- 
pen and just what they will do at every hour of the 
day. Once each New Year's day was a pinnacle on 
which they stood and looked out into an enticing 
splendor of vague possibilities. Now, on New 
Year's day they balance their books, and, presuming 
that they will make and spend about the same 
amount of money in the next year as in the last, 
settle down to the dull content of a certain compe- 
tence. So the interest of life, you see, depends 
upon its uncertain futures. It will not do to solve 
the problems of life, unless in solving them you open 
new ones. If you can do that, then you can keep 
the interest of living. If you can open a new pros- 
pect, with all the splendor of vague distance about 
it, yet farther on, then you can afford to go over 
and examine in detail and so lose the romantic 
beauty of the prospect that has already opened 
to you. 

My dear friends, all this seems to me to lead to 



44 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

very serious truth. It seems to me to show that life 
is certain to become dull and uninteresting and 
weary to an old man, to every man as he grows old, 
unless some future beyond life opens before him, 
which shall be to his old age all that the yet un- 
tried life was to his boyish dreams. The boy 
dreamed of the infiniteness of life, and there was 
color in his cheek and brightness in his eye and a 
dewy freshness in everything he said and did. 
That is all gone with you, perhaps gone so far back 
that it seems as remote as the book of Genesis when 
something calls it back to you. Is there any pos- 
sible thing that can replace it for you? Only that 
opening of another future, with new uncertainties, 
which has turned many an old man into a child 
again as he stood at the gateway of the Everlasting 
Life. When this life is exhausted, when its crooked 
streets have all been trodden to the end, still the 
interest need not have gone out of living if only 
from the hilltop of experience new and untrodden 
ways can open themselves before us, rolling on into 
the mystery of eternity. Then one may die with 
as true vitality, as eager curiosity, as he has ever 
lived. To him the interest of life is still preserved, 
as alone it can be preserved, by the power of an un- 
certain future. 

There are some touching instances of this feeling 
that an unknown future is necessary to any real 
pleasurable interest in living. Have you never 
heard people ask one another whether they would 
be willing to live their lives over again, and has it 
not sometimes seemed sad to see how almost every- 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 45 

body said " No " — almost with a shudder, as if the 
idea was almost dreadful to him? It is not really 
that men's lives have been so unhappy — that is not 
why they would dread a repetition so. There have 
been portions of their lives that they would dread. 
There are places, if we had to live our lives over 
again just as we have lived them, where we should 
set our teeth in grim misery as we came in sight of 
the old blunder or the terrible catastrophe which 
we had almost forgotten ; but on the whole there 
has been more of happiness than wretchedness in 
all our lives. But the main reason why people 
shudder when you ask them to live their lives again 
is that the proposition seems to them so utterly 
dreary. A life with no surprises! A life where 
you knew just what was coming! There is no suc- 
cession of terrible blows that can fall upon a man 
that could begin to be so wretched as the dulness 
of such a life would be. 

Or take another question : You ask yourself, 

1 Would I have lived my life, if I had known at the 
outset just what it was to be ? If all the picture 
could have been set before my baby-brain, would my 
baby-hands have been reached out to welcome it, or 
would they have thrust it impatiently away? '• I 
am afraid there are a good many people here who, 
either from general temper or from some temporary 
mood that they are in, would think the answer to 
that question only too plain. " Never! M they say. 

' Never would I have lived if I had known before- 
hand what life was! " And yet how good it is for 
these people that they have lived ! How much they 



46 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

have added to the world's stock. How much hap- 
piness they themselves have had in spite of all. 
They have been tempted on, spared the worst mis- 
ery of anticipation, and never wholly deserted by 
eagerness and hope, through the power of an un- 
certain future. 

My dear friends, if we feel this, what can we say ? 
Is there one of us that dare complain of God be- 
cause He keeps our futures uncertain ? Does it not 
put something like a reason underneath these end- 
less changes by which our plans are always being 
broken up and our best hopes disappointed ? Is it 
good for a man to grow gloomy over that which is 
the only source of interest, hopefulness, and joy in 
life? 

These words are very general; let us take our 
text somewhat more closely. This future in whose 
uncertainty the power resides is spoken of as the 
" day and hour wherein the Son of Man cometh," — 
what day and hour is meant ? The Son of Man is 
Christ Himself. His coming is certainly not a time 
when He draws near to the world, for He is in the 
world always. It must be, then, some time or 
times in which His presence becomes manifest. 
Such comings there are several of. Men discuss 
which of them the text refers to, — whether to the 
final coming for judgment, the coming to every 
man at death, or the coming of the Spirit at a man's 
conversion. Let us not try to settle which it means, 
but let us take all three. It is good for us; it 
cultivates the life called " watchfulness " within us, 
not to know when Christ is coming to judge the 






THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 47 

world, when He is going to call us to Himself by 
death, when He is coming by some great experience 
to our souls, — the unknown coming for judgment, 
the unknown time of death, the unknown spiritual 
experience. 

1. Take first the coming of Christ to judge this 
world. Clearly the Bible tells of some such time. 
Clearly there is to be some close of the present state 
of things and some new dispensation, to begin with 
some peculiar manifestation of Christ to men. For- 
ever in these chapters of the Bible runs the proph- 
ecy of the opened heaven and the Son of man 
sitting there throned among His angels. " He 
cometh, He cometh to judge the world, and the 
people with equity." But yet the time is all un- 
certain. " Of that day and hour knoweth no man/' 
Perhaps for cycles upon cycles yet this tangled web 
of forces may move on as it is moving now. Per- 
haps already the great wheels are trembling on the 
brink of stoppage. Science no more than revelation 
ventures to guess the time ; though science, just like 
revelation, catches glimpses of the coming fact. 

And then, when we ask what the effect of this 
uncertain future on the world's character is, we are 
struck first of all by this, — that every attempt (and 
men have always with a strange persistency kept 
making their attempts) to fix what God has left un- 
certain has done harm and not good to those who 
made their guesses. Certainly such attempts have 
not helped the religion on which they tried to fasten 
themselves. The Apostles evidently, after Jesus 
had gone away, believed that He would come back 



48 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

while some of them were yet alive, but that was not 
the religion that inspired the zeal of Paul and John. 
Again, as the thousand years after Christ approached 
toward the end of the ninth century, you know 
there was a strange and widespread impression that 
when the thousand years were over, Jesus would 
come. The people waited. From many a house- 
top, as, in the night, one century gave the world 
over to the next, eyes must have watched the 
heavens for the coming Lord. But we do not find 
that such a confident expectancy made the world 
better. Certainly there were few centuries darker 
than the ninth, the century of wars among the 
nations, and gross corruption in the Church, and 
ignorance and misery in private life. Again, many 
of us are old enough to remember how, forty years 
ago, a vast number of our people believed that on a 
certain mentioned day the world would end and 
Christ the Judge appear; but certainly, among the 
multitudes who looked for such a crisis, no one ever 
heard that virtue or religion came to any wonderful 
development, that life was purer, holier, profounder, 
than among their unbelieving neighbors. Nor will 
the most enthusiastic supporter of any of the Mil- 
lenarian theories that have attempted to tell what is 
to be the end of things with more or less exact- 
ness, venture to say that his theory has established 
for itself any right to be called necessary even to the 
highest Christian life. 

No ; history shows us that where men have thought 
they knew the end, it has not been good for them. 
It is better that they should not know. And cer- 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 49 

tainly we can see why. Can we not understand that 
the best culture for the world is just in that idea 
under which God has kept the world living, — the 
idea that all these things were temporary, and yet 
an entire ignorance as to the length of their en- 
durance ? If the world has been saved from entire 
sordidness, if its heart in every age has aspired after 
loftier things, if it has been able to keep in its re- 
membrance that character was the one permanent 
thing, if thus it has been able to sacrifice other more 
manifest things to the invisible majesty of character, 
the reason in large part has been that in all ages 
men have believed that the time would come when 
all these things would pass away. The " eternal 
hills" were not eternal. The calm heavens were 
some day to part in fire, and the Judgment Day of 
the world to come. On the other hand, if the 
world of men, believing in the coming Judgment, 
has still worked on, toiled on the substance of this 
perishable earth as if it were imperishable, developed 
its resources and so made it a fitter instrument for 
their own development, it has been because no day 
for the catastrophe stared them in the face, paralyz- 
ing their healthy activity, and blighting their cour- 
age. To live in one's work, and yet above one's 
work, is what one needs. To be a servant of the 
earth, and yet superior to the earth, where it has 
been put by God, is the lesson that the human soul 
always has been learning; and that lesson it has 
been taught by the power of the world's uncertain 
future. 

I think it is just the way in which a wise parent 

4 



50 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

treats his child during the preparatory years in 
which he lives still as a child under the parent's roof. 
He lets him know that that home-life is tempo- 
rary. He opens windows through which the boy 
can see the life that he must live for himself out in 
the world, when this first dispensation shall be over. 
And at the same time he draws no line, fixes no 
date, makes the child-life as real as it could be if it 
were to last forever. So God trains this world for 
the next. So He keeps Time full of solemn watch- 
fulness for Eternity. So, in the ears of a humanity 
which is to be educated by the ministry of perish- 
able things for those which are imperishable, He 
seems to be always uttering those unutterably 
solemn words: " Seeing that all these things shall 
be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to 
be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking 
for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God?" 
2. If we can see much reason why the world 
should be left in ignorance about the time of 
Christ's coming to be its Judge, we can understand 
even more of how good it is for every man not to 
know just when the word of the Lord will come to 
him, as it does come to every man, to call him out 
of this state of being to a higher. I suppose that 
we have all thought, sometimes, what differences it 
would make in all our life if we all knew from the 
beginning just when we were to be called to die. 
Certainly we do not know, men do not know them- 
selves, how much the certainty that they must die 
some time influences and controls them. It is not 
often on their lips. It is not often consciously upon 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 5 1 

their hearts. But there is something in the life of 
every man that would be changed in a moment if he 
suddenly were made aware that he were to stay 
here upon the earth forever. We say sometimes 
that men live here just as if they never were to die ; 
we think that all this hurrying crowd upon the street 
has utterly forgotten death and hurries on as if it 
were to pour up and down these thronged avenues 
forever; but it is not so. Every man has in his na- 
ture the influence of the fact that he always knows, 
though it is not always consciously before his mind. 
The traveller in the city is always different from the 
citizen, though he has no time fixed for his depar- 
ture, and even prolongs his visit to many years. So 
the pilgrim-and-stranger feeling is somewhere in all 
of us. It differs in us all. It is an awful sense of 
brooding mystery in some, a tireless and hurried 
energy in others, and in almost all it is a certain 
tenderness and dearness gathering about the earth 
which we are certainly some day to leave. But just 
consider what the consequences would be if this 
vague certainty were brought down and made defi- 
nite, and each man knew from the beginning of his 
course just when to him would come the summons 
that no man can disobey. 

The first thing that I think of is the great de- 
crease of physical energy and work that it would 
probably make in the world if every man knew just 
when he was to die. One of the strongest springs 
of action among men is the desire for the preserva- 
tion of their life, — perhaps it is the strongest spring 
of action. It is this, the desire to prolong their life, 



52 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

that has in large part broken up the forests and 
opened the mines and bridged the rivers and built 
the cities. This, in large part, is what one hears 
through all the clatter of the world's machineries and 
the hoarse roar of business, — the personal desire for 
life. It is the clangor of the hammers with which 
men are building walls between themselves and 
death. This, too, is at the root of almost all our 
institutions: society, government, — they are all to 
secure men in life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness ; and of these great ambitions life stands first 
and lies deepest of all. 

And, then, consider how, in the uncertainty as to 
the time of death, every man's labor lasts almost — 
some men's last quite — up to the time of death. 
Almost or quite up to the very last they still con- 
tribute to the wealth and progress of the world. No 
sight of the approaching end unmans their courage 
and makes them drop their tools before the time. 
Think, if you please, how many men, if they knew 
that their dying day was only one year off, would 
feel no spirit and no call to work during that year, 
the hope of self-preservation being definitely taken 
from them. And, then, think how much the world 
would have been robbed of, if all the labor that her 
millions of great and little workers have done within 
a year of the time when they were called away were 
taken out of the aggregate ; and we can see already 
some reason why the cloud is not lifted, and men 
walk on, working and living and hoping, up to the 
very door of the other life. 

And when I think again, not of what the world 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 53 

would lose, but of what the character and culture of 
the men themselves would lose, if the day when 
they were to leave the earth were known to them 
from the day when they first entered on it, then it 
seems clearer still. You train your little child for 
all the duties of his manhood. From his very cradle 
the thought of " when he is a man " is before you 
as your inspiration and your guide. God takes your 
child, still in his childhood, to the higher education 
of the perfect world. The training for this life that 
you gave him, if it was really sound and true and 
godly, was the best training that he could have 
taken to the Eternal School; but could you have 
given it to him if you had known that he was to die 
so young, that he was never to mingle among men 
in all the ministries and competitions of the world ? 
Or, again, could a young man train himself to pru- 
dence, self-constraint, truth, and all the qualities 
that make the best successes of men's middle-age, 
if he knew from the start that just upon the thres- 
hold of that middle-age the angel would touch him 
and he must go away? That eager student, — would 
he have studied so if he had always known that his 
knowledge would never be used here, that with its 
new richness all about him he was to lie down and 
die ? And then the happiness that comes to hearts 
that look forward into years of friendship, — could it 
have flowed in so abundantly and cloudlessly upon 
the soul if that soul had foreseen the coming separa- 
tion ? Still, indeed, there would be left the highest 
values of knowledge and the highest sources of 
happiness; still the student might have known that 



54 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

he could learn nothing that was really true, for 
which he would not be the richer in whatever world 
he lived; still the friend might twine his friendship 
all the closer that it might be strong enough not to 
break even with the strain that carried it beyond 
the grave; but all the inferior sources of culture 
and happiness, which, though inferior, are pure, on 
which we all so much depend, must surely suffer a 
blight. Surely it is a good, kind God, a blessed 
Father, who lets us know that He is coming, but 
does not tell us when. We are like children off at 
school, to whom the father sends word that he will 
bring them home, that so they may study all the 
harder and be ready, but does not fix the day lest 
they should drop the books altogether and merely 
stand looking for him out of the window, wasting 
their time. God will bring the shortness of life 
home to all of us so as to make us say, " We will 
work the harder/' but He will not let it weigh upon 
any of us so as to set us thinking, " It is not worth 
while to work." 

And we must think not merely of what such a 
certainty about the time of our death would take 
away from us, but also of what it would bring into 
our lives. It would set us all to preparing for death 
in a narrow and special sense. It is not good for a 
man to devote himself to preparation for dying. It 
is preparation for living that you need. When, in 
mediaeval times, men, feeling that death was near 
them, used to give up their work, lay down their 
arms, and, like the cloistered emperor, put on the 
cowl and go and live in monasteries, — nay, build 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 55 

their coffins and keep their epitaphs written on their 
cell-walls, — we know that it was a mere makeshift. 
It was better perhaps than nothing, but it was an 
attempt to crowd into a year or two what a whole 
lifetime should have done, to force by unnatural 
means that intimacy with the God to whom they 
were to go which should have been healthily gath- 
ered out of the daily experiences of a long, devout, 
obedient life. You cannot so make the perfect 
friendship any more than you can make the lower 
friendship so. To take away the uncertainty about 
the time of death would have a tendency (which the 
best men would resist, but to which multitudes of 
men would yield) to give the bulk of life up to in- 
difference and recklessness and crowd the last few 
months or days with an artificial religiousness that 
would have little power to prepare the soul for its 
great change. The only real way to " Prepare to 
meet thy God " is to live with thy God so that to 
meet Him shall be nothing strange. 

So, surely, it is better for us as God has appointed 
it. So, surely, the picture of a faithful man, by 
every duty of his life preparing himself for the next 
duty, and so at last finding that living has prepared 
him for dying, and laying his life back into the 
hands of a Father in whose strength he has lived it 
all, — this is the highest illustration of the power of 
an uncertain future to influence and ripen and pre- 
pare us for more than we foresee. 

3. And now, but little time remains for me to 
speak of the last of the three comings of the Son of 
Man. Christ comes to all last for judgment, Christ 



$6 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

comes to each of us at death, but Christ comes also 
in the hour of conversion, when He claims a man 
for His servant and bids him take up his cross and 
follow Him. In the religion of our day, conversion 
is made a less prominent and separate moment in a 
man's life than it used to be considered in the re- 
ligion of other days. If this change means that all 
the life is recognized as being more full of God, and 
so lifted up nearer to the level of the conversion- 
hour, then it is well; but if it means that the 
supernatural power of the conversion itself is being 
disallowed, and so the whole life brought down to 
the level of every-day worldliness, then it is bad. 
All Christian experience bears witness that there 
are times when that Saviour who is always present 
and always seeking us makes Himself peculiarly 
manifest to our souls and asks us to be His. It may 
be in connection with some great outward change 
that comes to us; or it may be something wholly of 
the inner life, unseen, unheard by any one beside 
ourselves; but do you not know that such times 
surely come ? I speak to any servant of the Saviour 
here: Were there not days, perhaps years, when 
you went on in your own way, Christ by you al- 
ways but you not seeing Him, Christ speaking to 
you and you not hearing Him ? But at last there 
came a time when He looked on you with a new 
face and you did see Him; when He spoke to you 
with a new voice and you did hear Him! That is 
the time — be it a moment or a day or a year — of a 
man's conversion, — the beginning of a new life. 
And now, can you not see that it makes a great 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 57 

difference whether that supreme meeting of your 
soul and God, which must come and which is 
fraught with such stupendous consequences, is to 
come at some fixed time, when you have reached 
some special age, when you are ready for some 
special study; or, on the other hand, whether it 
may come at any moment — at any moment between 
the solemn moment when you first find that you 
have a soul and that other solemn moment when 
you give your soul up to your Master and your 
Judge ? If the first, then you may wait, wait unex- 
pectantly until you hear Him coming. If the other, 
then any time in the ever-turning journey of life 
may bring you into sight of Him ; any sound close 
by your side may be His footstep. This next mo- 
ment may be His moment to bless your soul. Nay, 
this moment, now, may be His time, and you may 
be letting it pass just because you are not knowing 
that it may be any moment, and so are not listening 
every moment for the slightest indication of His 
coming. 

More and more the law of the Christian life seems 
to me to be this — that Christ the Saviour comes to 
every man, and that they that are watching for Him 
and expecting Him know Him when He comes, and 
enter with Him into some higher life. " They that 
were ready went in with Him to the marriage' ' ; 
these words of the old parable tell the whole story. 
Ah, yes, as we look back over our life, how sudden 
always have been the comings of the Son of Man ! 
We looked for Him off in some distance, and sud- 
denly His voice spoke to us close at our side. Again 



$8 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

we said to ourselves in some proud moment of self- 
exaltation, " Now He must be near me; now He 
will speak to me," but that proud, selfish moment 
has gone by, utterly cold and dead, without a sight 
or sound of Christ; and then, when we had just 
passed down off from the mountain where we hoped 
for so much, into a valley of humility where we ex- 
pected nothing, — then everything around us has 
been radiant with His presence, and He has spoken 
to us words of wisdom and a Brother's tenderest 
love. We have expected Him, and He has not 
come; we have forgotten Him, and He has been 
with us. The deepest experiences of our life have 
taken us unawares. In such an hour as we thought 
not the Son of Man has come. 

Every man knows this of his life, and so what is 
the law of life that it ought to make for us ? It 
is not hard to see. It must be always useless to pre- 
pare oneself against this or that moment, to make 
up conditions for what we fancy are to be the most 
critical times of life. That is spasmodic and unreal. 
But to be so possessed with the conviction that God 
is around us always, and may show Himself to us in 
any commonest moment, that we are always alert 
and ready to receive Him, — that is the true condi- 
tion of the soul. Sometimes from mere expectancy 
you may be deceived ; sometimes it may seem as if 
God spoke to you when it is only your own longing 
that He may speak that makes you think it is His 
voice ; but I think it is better to be mistaken so a 
hundred times than once not to be ready, and so 
say, " Oh, it is nothing!" when He really does 



THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 59 

speak. It is better, after all, to be so superstitious 
that we find God where He is not, than to be so 
sceptical that we will not find Him where He is. 

Have we not, then, come at the end to something 
like a clear tangible notion of what the watching is 
to which the Saviour urged His disciples long ago, 
and to which He still urges us ? It is not an act, 
not a habit, but a character. It is a constant alert- 
ness of soul which, believing that Christ does come 
near to people, is determined that He shall not 
come near us and escape us because we are asleep. 
It has no plan for the future, and so is always ready 
to catch any intimation of His plan. It is pro- 
foundly conscious that the world is full of Him, and 
so is ready to hear His voice from any unexpected 
corner. It believes, just as those disciples believed, 
that Jesus never died for men and left them to their 
fate, but that He will certainly come back to claim 
the souls He died for. It lives in prayer and work, 
both of them keeping it open and dependent; and 
by and by He comes, and they, being ready, enter 
in with Him to His home and their home in 
God. 

One would like to speak to all these young people 
very earnestly. Do not think that the life you are 
beginning has shown you yet all its mystery. Do 
not think you have got to the height or the depth 
of it when you have just found it pleasant and 
sunny. It is more solemn and profound than that. 
It will bring vast experiences. To you, more won- 
derful by far than you know yourself, and capable 
of far greater intercourses than you have imagined, 



60 THE POWER OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE 

the Son of Man will certainly come. Do not manu- 
facture experiences. Do not pay too much regard 
to those who shout to you, " Lo, here is Christ! " 
or, " Lo, He is there ! " but be so expectant of Him 
always, keep so in the pure way of His command- 
ments, pray so earnestly for Him to come, that 
when He does come you will know it; when He 
calls you, you will answer; when He says, " Come 
to me," you will leave all and follow Him. Let 
your life be that, and then one hardly dares to say 
which is the holier, the time here while you are 
watching for His coming, or the Eternity hereafter 
when He shall have fully come and received you to 
Himself. May God grant you first the one and 
then the other ! 



IV. 

THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE. 

" For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against princi- 
palities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this 
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." — Ephesians vi. 

12. 

In this world wherever there is life there is strug- 
gle. We grow so used to it as a perpetual accom- 
paniment of life that we do not always give it its 
true name. We give the name only to some forms 
of wrestling with difficulty, and think that other 
lives are easy and struggleless. But always when 
we come to know these other lives and to examine 
them with any kind of care, we find that they too 
are engaged in strife, that the difference is merely 
one of form. Sometimes one strong man's struggle 
shakes the world and makes the nations look. 
Sometimes it wears the man's soul out in silence, 
and cannot be told, however the struggler longs and 
tries to tell it to his dearest friend. Sometimes it 
wiites itself in haggard lines upon the forehead and 
the cheek; sometimes the darker the strife that 
rages behind, so much the brighter is the smile upon 
the face. Sometimes the struggle is the joy of the 
life, making it like a perpetual field of trumpets and 

61 



62 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

banners and marching hosts; sometimes it is all the 
blackness of darkness, as if a man wrestled day and 
night for years in a dark dungeon underground 
with an enemy whom he never saw and only came 
to know by the untiring persistency of his strength 
and cunning. Sometimes it is the saint struggling 
with the last temptation that seems to keep him 
from perfect peace ; sometimes it is the poor wretch 
struggling with what seems to be the last effort of 
the Spirit of Goodness to rescue him from perfect 
satisfaction and content in sin ; — whatever, however, 
it may be, in this world there is struggle wherever 
there is life. The only way in which some souls 
seem to escape from struggle is by lowering the 
tone of life, by making themselves half-dead. 

No man in this world need ever seek after strug- 
gle. Let him seek after life, and the struggle will 
come, healthily and naturally, by the law of the 
world we live in. When a young man or young 
woman, with a Byronic impulse, seeks directly for 
struggle, tries to reproduce in one life those signs 
which have told of the deep movement which has 
stirred some other life, the result is only an artificial 
and unpleasant affectation ; the contortions do not 
move our sympathy, but our disgust. No, do not 
try to struggle, but try to live, and the struggle will 
open before you surely. Do not seek it, and do not 
shun it, but let the increase of life deepen as it will 
the seriousness and solemnity of your contact with 
those things which your growing life will have to 
touch. It is one of those things which puts heaven 
past, outside of, our comprehension that there there 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 63 

is to be the fulness of life, without struggle, in un- 
hindered ease and peace. We cannot understand 
that now, for in this world wherever there is life 
there is struggle. 

And then, another thought which follows immedi- 
ately upon this, and which is also abundantly con- 
firmed by the experience of men, is that with every 
change in the character of life there will come also 
a change in the character of the struggle that goes 
with it. As men come to a new and higher life, so 
will they find themselves in the midst of a new and 
higher struggle. It is as when a soldier storms a 
citadel: with each new chamber into which he 
presses as he comes nearer to the central room 
which is the key and core of all, where the choicest 
treasures are guarded, he meets always a more and 
more watchful and formidable enemy. Only beside 
the very treasure, only when his hand is laid upon 
the prize which he has come through all the perils 
thus far to seek, does he meet the strongest enemy 
of all, the stoutest heart and strongest arm that the 
whole citadel can furnish. 

The illustrations of this are endless. A man has 
been trying to be rich, and he has met the enemies 
and hindrances that beset that search, — the fickle- 
ness of the market, the competition of his brethren, 
his own temptations to indolence or to extrava- 
gance. But by and by, perhaps, the man is rich, 
and then he presses forward into an inner chamber 
of ambition. He aspires to be wise. He wants to 
learn. With that wish opens a new life, and with 
the new life opens a new struggle. In his newly 



64 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

built study he fights a fight which his store could 
never give him, — no longer now against the chances 
of the market and the opposition of the street, but 
against prejudice, against bigotry, against intellec- 
tual selfishness, against pride, against all in himself 
and other men that dislikes and dreads the truth ; 
against all this he fights the moment that he be- 
comes a scholar. A man who has been selfish learns 
to love. Instantly he is struggling not merely for 
his own self-respect which it was so easy to con- 
ciliate, but for the respect and confidence of his 
beloved, which can be won only by magnanimous 
devotion. A man mounts to the thought of charity, 
and he is wrestling with other men's woes and sor- 
rows, no longer only with his own. 

Or take St. Paul. Think over his life. Think 
how, as he opened one door after another into the 
successive chambers of his long career, he always 
met a new fight in each of them, and his growing 
life was marked and recognized by his growing 
struggles. His life began with that mere struggle 
for a place among the physical things of the physi- 
cal earth, which all human lives must encounter first 
— the struggle for existence, — by success in which he 
made himself a standing-ground for all his other 
fightings. Then, as a scholar of Gamaliel, came 
his fight with ignorance and with all the enemies of 
the ideas that ruled in that master's school. Then, 
to the fiery young Pharisee, riding to Damascus, 
persecuting the upstart Christians, there came the 
new life of national enthusiasm, and with it the new 
struggle against what he thought his nation's ene- 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 65 

mies. Each of these lives, with its new struggle, 
was nobler than the one before it. 

But then this Paul became a Christian. To the 
spiritual truth of a spiritual Master he gave up his 
soul. The life hid in an unseen Christ opened be- 
fore him. He was drawn into it as if by a great, un- 
seen arm put out around him. And once in there, 
once living not for himself but for his Lord, the 
new life thoroughly begun, behold the struggle was 
all new! No longer now with disease and physical 
dangers, no longer now with the scholars of other 
schools who fought wordy battles with the young 
Gamalielites, no longer now with seditious followers 
of One who seemed a traitor to his nation and his 
church, but now with all the spiritual enemies of his 
Spiritual Lord,— with sin, with his own selfishness, 
with lust, with falseness, with unspirituality. The 
whole battle is drawn inward. On another field, 
with other weapons, inspired by other hopes, led by 
another watchword, now it rages. Hear him tell of 
it himself. " We wrestle not against flesh and 
blood, but against principalities, against powers, 
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, 
against spiritual wickedness in high places." 

This was the way in which St. Paul came up to 
this great utterance of my text. The spiritual life 
had brought the spiritual battle. We cannot read 
the words carefully, indeed, without remembering 
how much there was in Paul's mind which has 
grown unfamiliar to these modern minds of ours. 
Paul was a Jew. To the Jews the whole idea of be- 
ings outside of our race, who were in continual 



66 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

contact with and influence upon our race, was one in 
which they had been bred and in which the whole 
history of their nation had been lived. They be- 
lieved in angels, and almost looked for their daily 
presence and help. They believed in spirits of evil, 
and traced the evil works which they saw in the 
world to unseen spiritual hands. Man's sin consis- 
ted not simply in yielding to the persuasions of his 
own worse self, but in giving way to the tempta- 
tions of those external powers of wickedness of 
which the air was full. When St. Paul, then, de- 
scribes his battle, it is of these powers that he is 
thinking. The " principalities and powers," the 
" rulers of the darkness of this world," the " spiritual 
wickedness in high places," that is, in the upper re- 
gions of the sky, — all these are not figures of speech 
with him ; they are real beings, true objective ene- 
mies of the human soul. 

It is hard for us to realize how far we have depar- 
ted from that whole conception. Man's look then 
was turned outward, and all the universe was con- 
ceived as fighting for the possession of his soul. 
Man's look now is turned inward, and his soul is 
fighting with itself, tossing in the fermentation of 
its own internal passions, its own enemy or its own 
saviour. They are different views of human life, the 
objective and the subjective view. Both views are 
true, but they give us different sides of truth. 
Probably no century has been so one-sided as ours 
in its intense acceptance of one aspect of life and its 
almost complete rejection of the other. No century 
has had its eye so earnestly fixed upon man's strug- 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 67 

gle with himself. No century has made so little of 
the thought of any evil spirits outside of us, trying 
to harm our souls. And we are all men of our cen- 
tury, and must look on truth from the side from 
which our time regards it, but yet we never ought 
to entirely forget its other sides, from which it has 
most powerfully appealed to other times. I am 
willing enough to talk after our modern way, to 
represent the struggle of man as a struggle with 
himself; but all the time I want to remember with 
St. Paul and all the great objective thinkers and be- 
lievers, that the universe is large, that it is full of 
beings who must send forth influence upon each 
other, and so that, while the spiritual enemy with 
which I fight to-day meets me immediately as a lust 
of my own soul, it has its sources and connections 
farther back in the world of spiritual being which 
stretches far, far away past my sight, but not too 
far away to send forth forces from its farthest 
depths which shall touch and tell upon my life. 

We want to bear this in mind, and see that Paul's 
way of feeling and our modern way are really one. 
The underlying idea is the same, — that he who tries 
to live a holy life is beset by a new kind of enemy 
and lives in the midst of fears that he never felt be- 
fore. Paul sees those enemies gathering out of the 
realms of space. Range beyond range, world be- 
yond world, back into the most mysterious distance 
of the universe, he sees their hostile faces bent upon 
him, he feels their far-sent breath upon his cheek. 
We know our enemies, as they gather from the 
depths of our own nature, as they attack us from 



68 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

the newly stirred regions of our own tumultuous 
selves; but in both cases the meaning is the same; 
we have begun to live a new life and we have 
found it beset by new enemies and fears. 

Indeed, this was what Jesus said to His disciples 
when He invited them to a higher life. He de- 
scribed and characterized the new life by its new 
fear: " Fear not them that kill the body, and after 
that have no more that they can do, but fear Him 
who hath power to destroy the soul in hell. Yea, 
I say unto you, fear Him." These words really 
agree with and fulfil the words of Paul. Paul says 
that as a man grows nobler he will wrestle not with 
men, but with devils; Jesus says that as a man 
grows nobler he will fear not men, but God. They 
really amount to the same thing, which is, that as a 
man grows nobler he will fight and fear not for the 
body, but for the soul, will fight the soul's enemies 
and fear the soul's Lord, — just as when a soldier is 
raised to the command of a great army, he is filled 
at once with a new fear of the enemy that is set 
against him, and a new fear of the king who has 
raised him to such responsibility. 

Let us look then at this struggle of the higher 
life, the new battle of life which a man begins when 
he for the first time undertakes to do battle against 
his sins. It is a profoundly solemn moment. The 
man who heretofore has tried to do what the world 
called right, because he thought that it was decent 
or because it would make the world think better of 
him, gets a new idea. The right is right because it 
saves the soul. The wrong is wrong because it 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 69 

spoils the soul. The soul, the real spiritual self, the 
soul capable of a celestial whiteness, in danger of 
perpetual ineradicable stain, the soul whose purity 
is precious and delicate beyond anything on earth, 
— that soul becomes the touchstone and test of 
everything. Oh, my friends, with that new passion 
in the soul everything around you changes; expedi- 
ency, fame, pleasure, — every other wish, — is swal- 
lowed up in the desire to keep that soul pure. Is it 
any wonder that Christ called it a new life to which 
men could come only by a new birth? Let us see 
what some of its characteristics are. 

And, first of all, there is a certain strange and 
very delightful sense of dignity and exaltation 
which runs along with and continually blends into 
the fear with which the new life is beset. I think 
that this is always so. That which makes responsi- 
bility tolerable, that which supports a soul when 
any higher duty surrounds it with more pressing 
and dangerous dangers, is always the deep satisfac- 
tion, springing up with the fear and filling it and 
glorifying it, at finding that the manhood is capable 
of such a fear, that it has in it the power to dread 
that which it has now discovered to be its enemy. 
For natures might be graduated by the fears of 
which they are capable. And to come to a higher 
fear declares a higher nature and sends a thrill of 
conscious dignity all through the life. Man glories 
to find that he cannot play, u unconscious of his 
fate," like the *' little victims " who are only brutes. 
And in all the weight of danger which the man car- 
ries who has learned to care for his soul, there is a 



yo THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

sober joy which makes his life the happiest in all 
the world. I think we can have no idea of how the 
inspiring sense of human dignity would fade out of 
the life of our race if man came to really think him- 
self a creature of no spiritual capacity or peril, with 
a chance of no spiritual heaven, in danger of no 
spiritual hell. 

This is the first quality of the struggle with sin — 
the struggle after goodness. I would always men- 
tion this first. It is a solemn and noble exhilaration 
to the soul. And the next striking thing about it 
is the silence with which it goes on. When a man 
begins to fight his sins he does not sound a trumpet 
to tell the world that the battle is begun. The 
world rightly distrusts any such parade, and, if it 
hears the trumpet, believes that it is no real battle 
which is so vociferously announced, but only a 
sham fight, with an understanding all the time made 
between the man and his sins which he pretends to 
wrestle with. The essence of the real spiritual fight 
is its silence. A man is stirred to the depths in 
some great revival meeting, and with an impulse 
which he does not try to control, he lifts up his 
voice and shouts his hallelujah to the Lord. He 
declares his new allegiance. He gives himself to 
Christ with "solemn noise/' But by and by he 
begins the fight that he must fight under his new 
Master. His old sins hear what he has done, and 
gather up their power to reclaim their servant. 
They meet him in the old familiar places. They 
find him in his shop, in his study, at his table, in 
his church. There he must fight with them. The 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE *J\ 

other, — the meeting where he shouted, — that was 
not the fight, that was only the enlistment. This is 
the fight and there is no noise; all is silence here. 
Men see some sign, it may be, in the face, a new light 
in the eye, a pressure which speaks both of pain and 
power in the lips, but no word is spoken. The 
fight is too personal. It is for the man's own soul. 
The fighters are the man's own sins. Oh, how it 
sometimes transfigures the dull street as we are 
walking in it and suddenly remember that a very 
large part of these men and women whom we pass, 
are fighting in silence battles with temptation, with 
falsehood, with lust, with scorn, with doubt, with 
despair, with cruelty, which make their lives heroic! 
We cannot see their fight. They could not show it 
to us if they would y and would not if they could. 
The battle is " above the clouds." But the clouds 
of men's lives, the dull and dubious and foggy sides 
which they turn to us, cease to be dreary when we 
allow ourselves to think that behind and above the 
dreariest of them the real soul of the man is fight- 
ing silently with its sins, and winning certainly a 
better life. 

It is this silence of the spiritual struggle that 
easily lets one who is not a sharer in it become 
sceptical about it. I do not doubt that there are 
men who honestly think that there is no such thing, 
that it is all a matter of nerves and dreams. That 
a man should fight with other men to win from them 
what is theirs — that they can understand. They are 
doing that themselves every day. But that a man 
should fight with himself for himself, with his own 



J2 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

sins for his own soul, — that is incomprehensible. 
It never can be made credible to such a disbeliever 
till he himself undertakes it. When he does, when, 
on some great, new birthday of his life, he feels his 
soul claiming him, sees it beset — poor thing! — with 
all its enemies, and gives his life up to saving it, — 
when that time comes, then he will understand the 
spiritual fight of all these other souls. The mists 
will scatter from before his eyes, and that fight will 
seem to him to be the one real thing that is really 
going on in all the world. The earth will seem to 
rock with it. He will feel it all about him when he 
once carries it within him. 

And this suggests another characteristic of the 
spiritual struggle, namely, its companionship. Silent 
as it is, it is not solitary. Have we not all felt 
sometimes that silence, with those who are in 
genuine sympathy with one another, brings men 
nearer together than any talk can do ? Talk neces- 
sarily obtrudes details. Talk compels me to feel 
the special form of a brother's life, and so, in the 
differences which there must be between the form 
of his life and mine, obscures the identity of spirit. 
But two souls side by side, doing the same essential 
work in different forms, but doing it in silence, feel 
one another's companionship perfectly, and get the 
best blessing and help from one another. So it is 
in men's fight with their sins. Let every man shout 
aloud the story of his battle, and the impression will 
be of infinite difference. Let every man fight on 
with earnestness, but with no foolish attempt to tell 
the details of his struggle to his brethren ; and the 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 73 

truth of the identical spirit that pervades them all 
will come out clear, and each will get the inspiration 
of all the rest. A world full of men who fight their 
several battles in their several circumstances is like 
one of those old eastern towns where there is one 
single fountain, out of which all the people of the 
town have to draw all the water that they need. 
They live their different lives; they use the water 
which they draw for various uses, — one in one trade, 
another in another, — but once a day they all meet 
at the fountain to refill their pitchers for their sev- 
eral works. The fountain is the centre of the town 
and gives it all its unity. So the souls of all earn- 
est men are in their different struggles, but they all 
meet, all rest, in Him who is the supply, the foun- 
tain of them all, the God to whom they are all dedi- 
cated. He who is the fountain of goodness is the 
centre in whom all men who are struggling for good- 
ness find unity with one another. How true, how 
deep, that union is ! You have not learned its deep- 
est quality if you require that men should tell you 
what their struggles are, and tell you that they 
know of yours. You have not fully learnt it unless, 
without a word, you live in company, through God, 
with every soul, known or unknown, whose life in 
its own way is seeking Him. 

Yet one more thing about the spiritual struggle 
which gives it a large part of its character is its per- 
petualness, its persistency. It is to run on through 
all our life. We always do differently those things 
which we do temporarily and under some special 
demand, and those other things which we do 



74 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

continually as a part of our life. The first are spas- 
modic and take force out of us. The others are 
calm and determined, and put life into us. There 
is always a difference between the taking of occa- 
sional medicine and the taking of regular food. And 
some men fight their sins as if they expected to 
conquer them all and to be perfectly good by to- 
morrow night. Other men look calmly forward and 
see the work they have to do stretching on solemnly 
to the very end; and, with complete dedication, ac- 
cept struggle not as the temporary necessity, but as 
the perpetual element of life. Oh, what a repose 
comes to a man's soul when he has once done that, 
— the repose not of idleness, but of accepted work. 
No longer does he tire himself in trying to shirk 
what he knows is as true a part of himself as the 
drawing of his breath. He wakes every morning to 
his struggle, not with weary surprise, but with glad 
recognition that his struggle is still there. He plans 
for it far ahead as a thing which, he is sure, will still 
be with him. And his greatest wonder about death 
and heaven is how he can ever leave behind that 
which is such a true part of himself, and what it will 
be to grow in goodness against no resistance, how 
it will seem to do right when there is no temptation 
to do wrong which must first be trodden under foot. 
The dignity of spiritual struggle, then, its silence, 
its companionship y and its perpetualness, — these are 
the positive qualities in that fight with unseen sin in 
which every true man is engaged, and in which his 
deepest life is lived. I want still to suggest to you 
what are some of its negative qualities, what are 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 75 

some of the freedoms into which a man is liberated 
by it, at the same time that it gives these endow- 
ments to his life. When St. Paul says that we 
wrestle " against principalities and powers/* he says 
also that " we wrestle not against flesh and blood/ ' 
The more that the battle with the unseen for the 
unseen takes possession of a man, the more the bat- 
tle with the seen for the seen must let him go. You 
may put it to yourself either as a necessity or as a 
privilege, either " you may " or " you must." But 
at any rate the two are inconsistent with one another, 
the eagerness for the spiritual and for the temporal 
victory. They cannot live together. This liberty 
from carnal passions and struggles will be the best 
test that the higher spiritual struggle has really en- 
tered into us. When the passion of our life is to 
conquer sin and be good, we shall let men beat us 
in the race of business; we shall let men overwhelm 
our wishes with their arrogance, or drown our good 
repute in their slanders, wherever the great fight of 
our life, the fight with sin, would suffer a moment's 
hindrance by our effort to refute the slander or to 
right the wrong. This is a noble liberty. The true 
struggler with sin will no more turn out of his way 
to punish a man who has wronged him than the cap- 
tain who is leading his army into deadly fight will 
stop to chase a fly that stings him on the way. The 
battle with "principalities and powers " puts us 
above the fight with " flesh and blood." 

Again, this assurance of the Apostle, that the true 
man's battle is not with flesh and blood, has another 
meaning. It contains that old truth which it is so 



76 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

hard for all of us to learn, but which, when we have 
learned it, cuts for us the knots of so many difficul- 
ties, — the truth that the moral trouble of our lives 
does not lie in our circumstances, and that it is not 
our circumstances that we have got to conquer in 
order to be better men. Fighting with poverty, 
fighting with ignorance, fighting with allurement, 
fighting with bad health, beating ourselves against 
the narrow walls in which we have to live, — those 
may be fights that we cannot escape ; but none of 
them is the great fight of our life. We may be de- 
feated in them all, and yet be conquerors in the 
fight to which God sent us. Not with circumstan- 
ces but with spiritual conditions is the struggle 
that makes us men ; not with the things the tempter 
uses for his tools, but with the tempter; not against 
flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness. 

But still more Paul's view of life shows us the 
folly of substituting personal hostilities for the war 
with wickedness. It is so easy to hate a wicked man ! 
It is so hard to hate a sin ! And men have always 
been letting one slip into the place of the other. 
This is what has made those dreadful things called 
religious wars, and the persecutions of heretics, 
which have stained the pages of Christian history 
with such unchristian blots. Three hundred years 
and more ago two knights stood before the great Em- 
peror Charles the Fifth, one asserting and the other 
denying the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. 
The Emperor bade them fight their battle out with 
spears upon the field. They fought; and the cham- 
pion of the disputed doctrine unhorsed his adversary 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE yj 

and compelled him to confess his error as he lay 
helpless on the ground. What a strange, deep twist 
there must have been in men's minds before such a 
performance could have meant anything to them. 
Imagine the brave young victor standing with his 
foot upon his prostrate foe. He has conquered him. 
He hears the words of reluctant and insincere con- 
fession groaned forth between his tortured lips. 
And then, suppose, in all his flush of victory there 
start up in his own soul, as well there might unless 
he is merely a splendid animal with an arm that is 
invincible and a mind incapable of thought, — sup- 
pose there start up in his own soul doubts about 
the dogma in whose behalf he has fought and con- 
quered. Suppose it seems to him, all of a sudden, 
to be incredible, — this for which he has risked his 
life. How worthless this battle which he has just 
fought with his brother knight must seem to him ! 
Nozv the only real fight is just beginning in his own 
troubled soul. The shouts of the people tell him 
he has conquered, and the doctrine is sustained. He 
knows that the battle is yet to fight, that it lies be- 
tween him and these unseen doubts. The victory 
over flesh and blood withers into worthlessness even 
as he takes its laurel. The true wrestling is to be 
with doubt and unbelief; and for that he goes to 
the silence of a cloister or the venerable peace of 
some altar in the Church. 

We do not set our knights on horseback any 
longer for the faith, but oh! the cheaper, tawdrier 
way in which we set denomination over against de- 
nomination, and count the majorities of church over 



78 THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 

rival church, and think that that has anything to do 
with the answering of the question over which the 
soul of man is anxious, — What is truth ? We do not 
any longer kill one disbeliever, but we think that in 
some way by hating and abusing him we substan- 
tiate our own belief. Only when in a man's own 
soul the real strife comes, does it appear how worth- 
less all that which we called fighting for the truth 
really was. When the " powers of the air " are up 
in arms against us, when our own hearts fling their 
doubts in our faces, when we are wrestling for be- 
lief with the devil of unbelief who has taken posses- 
sion of our own souls, — then is the moment when 
we are least likely to revile the unbeliever. The 
fight with 4< principalities and powers" frees us from 
the struggle with flesh and blood. That is the 
human charity and patience which belong to all 
deep life. 

And just once more, the law that the deepest 
struggle of life is spiritual gives us, when we have 
realized it, the power to separate between the 
special forms and the essential spirit of the wicked- 
nesses that are around us, and always to fight against 
the spirit, not against the form. To denounce dis- 
honesty not because it is dishonest, but because the 
cheater happens to be cheating us; to abuse im- 
purity because of some offensive aspect which for 
the moment it has taken; to upbraid slavery not 
for the absolute wrong that it does to the slave's 
manhood, but for the blood that a specially cruel 
master draws from the slave's back, — all of these 
are fightings not against the spirit but against the 



THE SPIRITUAL STRUGGLE 79 

form of sin. Christ set us nobly an example of the 
fight, not against the form, but against the spirit, 
when, instead of rebuking the single bad acts which 
He saw about Him, He laid the strong and tender 
hand of His Redemption on the essential badness 
of the human heart, and so has changed the world. 

O friends, that we might know — I hope that 
many of you do know already — the privilege and 
joy of that profoundest struggle, in which a man, 
full of the passion of holiness and faith, wrestles 
with sin and doubt; and, coming by Christ who is 
our Brother to God who is our Father, finds etern- 
ally in Him the goodness and the faith which are 
well worth all the struggle through which we may 
have to reach them, and without which no man really 
lives. 



V. 
THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD. 

" Take away her battlements, for they are not the Lord's." — 
Jeremiah v. io. 

It seems to be a hard and cruel cry which the 
Prophet Jeremiah utters in these words. Jerusalem 
was the City of God. Over the choosing and win- 
ning of the picturesque site where it was to stand, 
over its gradual growth, over the building of its 
temple, over its fortifications and embellishments, 
over its fortunes in peace and war, God had watched 
with peculiar care. Its enemies had been His ene- 
mies, its friends His friends. And now His city was 
beset by foes. She stood, almost visibly trembling, 
upon the rocky height where God had set her, al- 
most as if she were a frightened deer which had 
taken refuge there from the dogs of war whom she 
could hear all round her, howling for her blood. 
The Chaldeans were pressing upon her and thirsting 
for her life. And the poor city was getting comfort 
out of the single thought that she was well protec- 
ted. Harassed and frightened, she looked up to her 
walls and there were the battlements which she had 
built. They surely would protect her. To be sure 
they were her own, not God's. He had not bade 
her build them. She had built them even against 

80 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 8l 

His will. But now, how strong they looked ! How 
well it was that she had ventured to put them up! 
How the enemy would tremble at them! Only to 
picture herself without them made her shudder. 
And just then rang the stern voice of her prophet 
through her streets, " Her battlements are not the 
Lord's, take them away!" The very thing she 
trusted in! Her pride and strength and hope and 
confidence — take them away! Was this the God 
v/ho loved her, who had promised to protect her ? 
Was this His prophet whose voice now cruelly com- 
manded the destruction of the only thing that could 
save His city ? Well may the people have trembled 
in the streets and thought that their God had for- 
saken them indeed ! 

This is the picture which stands out in the proph- 
et's verse. Of what that picture represents and 
stands for in our modern life I want to speak this 
morning. Every human life is dear to God. Every 
human life, when it thinks of how God has blessed 
it and shown to it the tokens of His love, must 
seem to itself to be a sort of Jerusalem, a city built 
and furnished and glorified by God. Such a re- 
semblance between the life which God loves and the 
city which He used to love so dearly has been often 
suggested. The picture of Jesus w r eeping over 
Jerusalem, for instance, has been always appropri- 
ated by souls which wanted to depict the sorrow of 
the Saviour over the wasted opportunities of any 
life. Souls are Jerusalems which God has built and 
which are perpetually watched and protected by 
His love. 



82 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

And then the parallel seems to go on. As God 
by His prophet bade the defences of old Jerusalem 
to be swept away, and would not tolerate any at- 
tempt to save the city by means which He had not 
ordained, and with what seemed severest cruelty 
stripped her bare of the very things of which she 
had been most proud and in which she had most 
trusted, so there are many souls which seem to have 
been treated by God in the same way. They too 
have built themselves defences and decorations 
which He has broken down. They too have been 
left desolate and bare just at the time when it 
seemed as if they most needed luxuriance and ful- 
ness. They too have seemed to find God cruel and 
stern as, with a hand which appeared to have no 
pity, He tore their dearest things away; and they 
too have had at last to learn, just as Jerusalem did, 
that their God had never been so kind to them as 
just in those days when He took away the battle- 
ments which were not His and left them naked and 
exposed, with nothing to trust to but His help. It 
is of this treatment of lives by God — the taking away 
of the battlements which are not His — that I desire 
to speak. 

The distinction which the words imply is one that 
every man who is aware of God at all can easily 
understand. God is so universal, so complete, that 
the life which He occupies and guards He claims 
entirely for His own guardianship and occupancy. 
He wants it wholly for Himself. That which the 
man who lives in the life does, he must do as God's 
tenant, everything that he does being embraced 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 83 

and surrounded by God's ownership. All that the 
man does to make his life safe and strong and grow- 
ing, he must do as the tenant of God, completing 
and strengthening God's life — the life that belongs 
to God — in God's way. Thus every good effort of 
a man to perfect his life, every right and healthy 
culture which he gives to himself in reverence of 
and obedience to God, is one of God's battlements 
— one of the methods by which God through him 
develops and protects this city of His love. But 
when a man forgets his tenantry and tries to 
strengthen his life as if it were no property of God's, 
as if it were no sacred, holy thing, but merely a per- 
sonal possession of his own ; when, then, he defends 
it by mere earthly policies and plans, or even by 
deeds which are wicked and base, — then he is putting 
on God's city battlements which are not God's; and 
it is these which God often pulls down because the 
strength which seems to be in them is weakness. 
All that a man does to make his life safer and better 
and stronger, in obedience to God, are the battle- 
ments of God ; all that a man does to strengthen his 
life in selfishness and disregard of God are the man's 
own battlements ; and however for a time these last 
may stand, and men may trust in them, at last they 
must come down, and it is the mercy of God that 
calls for their removal. 

Indeed, no man has compassed and gone around 
the mercifulness of God on every side, who has not 
discovered this kind of mercy in Him and felt its 
richness and beauty. A child has certainly known 
only part of his father's love who has thought of his 



84 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

father as loving only in his indulgence. There is a 
whole other region of his father's love which he has 
never entered, — the region in which his father, with 
a profounder care for him and also with a completer 
trust in him, shall show his mercy by denial. We 
can all remember, I suppose, how once if men had 
asked us how we knew God loved us, the answer that 
leaped to our lips would have been the glowing cata- 
logue of all that He had given us, all the incentives 
which He had put into our lives, all the securities 
by which He had surrounded us, all the successes 
by which He had shown us that we belonged to 
Him. These still remain. These still are on our 
lips when we sing His praises; but if we have at all 
compassed His love as the years have swept along, 
there is another side of it which has grown also 
dear to us, and which has in its dearness a peculiar 
depth and strength and sweetness which are all its 
own. There is a profound strain in our thankful- 
ness which sings of the many times in which it has 
been through the exhibition of our own weakness 
that God has shown us His strength ; of the plans 
and purposes which He has brought to failure in 
order that out of their failure He might build suc- 
cess. It is a poor and wretched life which has not 
such consecrations of its disappointments and its 
miseries. A life which has not these carries as a 
burden what it ought to be hugging as a treasure; 
and one whole side of the perfect sun of God's 
mercy, which burns with a glory all its own, this life 
has never seen. 

Let me come to more special illustrations of what 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 85 

I mean; and just in passing I may note how true 
our truth is of the history of the great groups of 
men, of states and churches, — the truth that God 
often in seeming cruelty tears down what seems to 
be a life's strongest protection and most beautiful 
adornments, in order that He may make the life 
really safe and really beautiful. The groups of 
men, the nations and the churches, often seem as 
if they were men seen through some sort of lens 
which magnified their size, and, while it blurred 
many of their more delicate details, brought out in 
broader exhibition the great fundamental features 
of human character and tendency, and so gave us a 
chance to study some things concerning man and 
them in a way which the individual man did not 
make possible. And what can tell the story of the 
breaking down of old and treasured institutions in 
the state, what can put a meaning behind the terri- 
ble convulsions or the slow growths by which autoc- 
racy and feudalism have disappeared from half the 
world, what can read to us the grand and simple 
secret of the destruction here in our own land of 
slavery which to so many men seemed to be the 
very palladium of our liberties and the very battle- 
mented crown upon our nation's head, but this, that 
God saw in each age that what the nations called 
their strength was really their weakness, and out of 
heaven He sent forth His voice crying: " Take her 
battlements away. They are not Mine." 

And in the Church's history, who does not know 
how church members have always been setting their 
heart upon something, some statement of doctrine 



86 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

or some expedient of organization, and then piling 
up all the most sacred interests of their religion be- 
hind that; as men in a besieged town bring their 
most delicate and precious possessions and heap 
them up in the one bomb-proof that they think 
most absolutely impregnable. Often they were not 
wholly sure that the doctrine on which they staked 
everything was absolutely true, or that the expedi- 
ent to which they trusted was wholly righteous ; but 
their pride and their fear united to make them 
treasure it and raise on it their brightest banner, 
and think that in it the Church's safety lay. And 
what are all the Reformations, with their fearful 
convulsions, but just the thunder of the voice of 
God shaking these false defences, which make His 
Church not strong, but weak; what are His com- 
missions to His great Reformers, His Luthers and 
His Cromwells, but the same old message which He 
sent by His Jeremiah — the message which always 
sounds so cruel, and really comes out of the heart of 
His tenderest and most divine compassion — bidding 
them take down the battlements which are not His. 

But I do not want to dwell upon the nations or the 
churches. I want to come more close to you. What 
I have been saying may serve for illustration ; and 
now, turn to the way in which God treats our lives, 
the way in which, I think, some of you will recog- 
nize that He has treated you. 

I. The blankest, plainest, and most common case 
of all is that in which a man tries to secure pros- 
perity by fraud or some kind of unrighteousness. 
The forms of such attempts are numberless. The 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 87 

essence of them all is one. If I could issue a sum- 
mons and subpoena the experiences of you business 
men, I should not lack for testimony or for illustra- 
tions in the very lines of life where you are most 
familiar. There is no line of life wherein men seek 
success in which there are not men who believe that 
they can get success, and protect success when it is 
got, by fraud. The petty shopkeeper who misrep- 
resents his goods, the great capitalist who misleads 
the market, the office-seeker who defrauds the polls, 
the doctor trying to impress men with pretensions 
which he knows are not true, the lawyer pretending 
to believe what he does not believe, the writer mak- 
ing men read what he writes by flavoring it with 
impurity, the leaders of society who degrade its 
purity that they may add to its attractiveness, — _ 
where should we end the catalogue ! It bewilders 
us when we think of the amount of labor which has 
been expended, which is being expended every day, 
in building these false defences of men's wealth and 
comfort. 

And then what comes? God does not want you 
to be poor; He does not want you to be wretched; 
and yet, in spite of countless exceptions and delays, 
how the conviction has grown rife among men that 
there is some power whose tendency it is to break 
down every battlement of fraud and iniquity, and 
leave exposed to ruin the prosperity which tried to 
shelter itself behind such feebleness. "A power not 
ourselves which makes " against unrighteousness — 
that is the impression which many men's experience, 
conspiring with their own misgivings as to what 



88 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

ought to be the world's construction and govern- 
ment, has given them of God. Has God shown Him- 
self so at all to you ? Have you seen any of your 
tricks for the support of your prosperity fall into 
ruin ? Have you looked up, ready to curse God for 
His cruelty? And then perhaps have you seen some- 
thing in the face of God which made you stop, which 
put a new question in your soul, which called up the 
deeper perception of a deeper love, and at last, as 
you thought and thought and thought about it, has 
let you see that God never was so kind to you as 
when He broke down the wrong and the sham be- 
hind which you had sheltered your budding hopes 
and compelled you to trust those hopes to Him, 
that He might first make them over into such hopes 
as should be worthy of a child of His, and then 
might ripen them into fulfilment in His own time 
and His own way ? If you have known any such 
experience as that, you have been taken into one of 
the richest rooms of God's great schoolhouse, one 
of the rooms in which He makes His ripest and 
completest scholars. Oh, if our souls to-day could 
mount to the height of some such prayer as this : 
" Lord, if I am building around the prosperity of 
my life any battlements which are not Thine, any 
defences of deceit or injustice or selfishness, break 
down those battlements whatever pain it brings, 
however it may seem to leave my hopes exposed,' ' 
— if we could go up into some mountain of aspira- 
tion and pray that prayer, how earnest and calmly 
ready for whatever God chose to do to us our souls 
would grow! 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 89 

2. Again, see how God deals with men's efforts 
to secure for themselves peace and repose of mind, 
freedom from disturbance and anxiety. The way 
that a man first tries to secure that precious treasure 
is often by the studious culture of his self-compla- 
cency : " Let me be able to think well of myself, and 
then behind that wall of self-esteem my soul may 
sit down undisturbed/' And so a man goes to 
work to cultivate his satisfaction with himself. He 
tells over to himself his own good qualities. He 
shuts his eyes to all his own defects. He keeps in 
the company of the men who are most sure to praise 
him. He shuns any rough, honest soul who will re- 
mind him of his faults. He does the things he can 
do best, and so keeps conscious of his powers. He 
avoids the tasks which it is hard for him to do, and 
which will expose his weakness. So he tends his 
self-complacency. He feeds it and pets it and 
makes it grow, and behind it he sits down in the 
peace of self-content. But then how often, when a 
man has just got his self-complacency built up, 
there comes some dreadful blow that breaks it 
down. Some terrible mortification comes. Some 
shameful exposure breaks out. Men find out as it 
seems by diabolic instinct where your weak spot is. 
Or, without any blow, any attack or open scandal, 
there just comes creeping in upon you misgivings 
about yourself, visions of your own meaner and 
smaller parts which you have tried to hide and to 
forget, and you find that your whole bulwark of 
self-complacency is riddled and honeycombed with 
doubts and suspicions about yourself; and your 



90 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

well-sheltered peace shivers and shudders behind its 
useless barricade. It is a terrible condition unless 
it can be but preliminary to another, unless where the 
worthless barrier of self-complacency has fallen the 
true protection of humility can be built up, and 
the soul can come to that only true peace and re- 
pose which is attained by the absolute distrust of 
itself and the hiding of itself behind the great, wise, 
strong, loving guardianship of God. This was what 
Jesus did for Nicodemus. This is what He wants to 
do for all our souls, which He first exposes and fills 
with shame, and then shelters in all their conscious 
nakedness behind Himself. 

3. Then take another of the precious things of 
human life which a man may try to keep safe be- 
hind false defences. The esteem of our fellow-men 
— no standard of life is true and healthy which does 
not count that a very precious thing indeed. Not 
the most precious, — on the contrary, a thing to be 
always held with a certain looseness, as a man in 
shipwreck holds the box in which his property is 
contained, ready to let it drop at any moment when 
it must be dropped to save his life. So a man ought 
to hold his fellow-men's esteem, ready to let it drop 
the moment that he cannot hold it and yet keep with 
it his own self-respect and his loyalty to God. But 
while it is not the most precious, it is a very pre- 
cious thing. All true men desire it and value it. And 
now suppose that that esteem, your reputation 
among men, is guarded and kept safe behind some 
false conception which they have formed of you. 
They think some act which you have done was 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 91 

brave when it was really cowardly, or unselfish 
when it was really full of selfishness, or the result 
of deliberate intelligence when it was really nothing 
but a happy blunder. It may be that you have 
falsely claimed these merits for yourself, or it may 
be that they have chosen to attribute them to you. 
In either case there sits your reputation behind its 
false defences, its battlements which are not truth's 
and are not God's. I think that very often a man 
is genuinely impatient with such a misconception of 
his merits. He even hates it. The reputation 
which is shielded behind it seems to be a mean and 
sickly thing. But very seldom has a man the 
strength of soul to put up his own hand and pull 
that misconception down. It is a hard thing for a 
man to speak out and say: " I am not what you 
think me. Here is what I am. Judge me truly, 
and hate or praise me as I genuinely deserve/' In 
our nobler moods we may do that; but often God, 
kind to our feebleness, spares us the effort and does 
it for us. Very often He tears away our false re- 
pute and shows us as we are, lets men behold us at 
our worst. And many and many a man, I think, 
who would not have the strength himself to tell men 
that he was not all they thought him, is profoundly 
glad when God in some way sweeps the cloud aside 
and, reducing the exaggerated reputation to reality, 
gives him a chance to win men's truer, even though 
it be far more moderate, honor for what he really is. 
4. I shall take only one illustration more, but it is 
perhaps the most urgent and impressive of them all. 
Every one of us has been tempted — and most of us 



92 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

have yielded sometimes to the temptation — to guard 
the truths which we hold dear and sacred, and the 
faith which we have in the truths we hold, by bat- 
tlements which, if we questioned ourselves, we knew 
were certainly not God's. I believe some truth of 
my religion; I believe it really; I know that it is 
true. But I know also that there is a great deal in 
the world which is in conspiracy against my truth. 
I know that I hold it against enemies. I know that 
my faith in it is constantly in danger; and, knowing 
that, it is only too natural that I should try to build 
around it every possible defence, and even tolerate 
and help to build defences which I know are not 
strong and sound. See what some of those false de- 
fences are. I may put forward arguments, not 
merely to other people, but to myself, which I know 
are fallacies and do not really support the faith I 
hold. I may defame the character and the religious 
life of men who do not hold my truth, trying to 
make out that disbelief in it makes a man wicked, 
and so hoping to strengthen my faith in it by all my 
dread of sin. I may put forward the authority of 
men who have believed what I believe, and who 
have been very good and noble men, but whose 
goodness and nobleness I know had no inherent and 
essential connection with their having believed this 
truth. Or I may try to intensify my sense of its 
preciousness by making it exclusive, talking of what 
ought to be the worlds possession as if it were my 
own peculiar privilege, or by narrowing the truth to 
my form of it so as to think that no man holds it 
who does not hold it just like me. Or, finally, I 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 93 

may build up around my faith the sheer, dense wall 
of bigotry — that gross, coarse, thick, unreasonable 
mixture of pride and fear and obstinacy and hesita- 
tion, all mingled and kneaded together into a stub- 
born mass, through which men flatter themselves 
that no arrow of doubt can penetrate, but through 
which it is also absolutely certain that no light can 
come. 

These are the false defences which men build 
about their faith, and when they are built they seem 
to their builders to be not merely part of the faith 
which they assume to protect, but often its most 
precious part. The very fact that it is of the man's 
own building, and not of God's, makes the cabinet 
in which he has enshrined his faith even dearer to a 
man's soul than God's jewel it enshrines. Sooner or 
later, to every man who builds such battlements 
about his faith the hour of their destruction comes, 
and it is very terrible. The false argument is tri- 
umphantly refuted. The slandered heretic does 
some noble act that refutes at one stroke all my 
slanders. The authorities on whom I have relied 
desert me. And, so far from accepting my faith in 
the narrow and sectarian way in which I hold it, the 
world makes it evident to me that my faith never can 
become its faith until it has broadened itself to meet 
needy humanity with the entire truth. And, finally, 
my bigotry displays its essential stupidity and hate- 
fulness so that not even I, the bigot, can give it any 
longer reverence or love or trust. These are terrible 
blows to a man's faith, when its trusted defences 
fall. The faith, stripped and exposed, frightened 



94 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

and bewildered, halts and thinks that everything is 
gone. It sees the sceptic standing and shouting on 
the ruins of its battlements, with his sword drawn, 
all ready to leap over the wall and take its life. 

And just then it is — then, in the moment of its 
apparent failure — that to many a frightened faith 
the revelation of its true strength has come. It is 
just then, when it seemed as if what he had believed 
was at the mercy of every unbelieving enemy, that 
many and many a believer has to his wonder learned 
that the only real strength of a belief lies in its ab- 
solute truth ; that, in the long run, no weight of ac- 
cumulated authority and no sacredness of organized 
institutions can keep a faith safe which is not true; 
and likewise that no faith which is true can ever 
perish for the mere lack of the weak battlements of 
human authority or institutional support. There 
is no confidence or real belief in that which he be- 
lieves for any man till he learns that. Until he 
learns that, you will see him out upon the walls af- 
ter every gale of unbelief, anxiously counting his 
authorities and setting up his pasteboard battle- 
ments which have been blown down. When he has 
learned that, he trusts his faith and lives in it. 
Driven back to the fundamental questions concern- 
ing it, enlarging it into its most majestic simplicity, 
finding the witness of its truth in God's Word and 
his own soul, finding every day new strength and 
new simplicity in his faith as it meets each new at- 
tack, there is no gratitude in all his grateful heart so 
deep, so earnest, as that with which he thanks the 
God who let him be bewildered and frightened by 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 95 

the destruction of the weak, unreal protections of his 
faith. " Now, at last," he says, " I know what it is 
really to believe/' 

Oh, there are many believers among us for whom 
God has done all that. As they look back over their 
lives, there are days whose memory still makes them 
shudder, days when it seemed to them as if all faith 
were gone and all the world of truth were but the 
very blackness of darkness of despair. And yet 
these very days are the days out of which came the 
light that now makes their life a perpetual song and 
joy. For then God showed them that for His child 
there can be no final witness of His truth except 
Himself and the immediate testimony of His Spirit, 
and that whatever hinders or restrains the giving 
of Himself to His child's soul, however sacred or 
necessary it may seem, it must be His wish and His 
child's best blessing to have swept away. 

I turn back from these illustrations to the general 
truth which they all illustrate. I hope that they 
have made it clear. Failure, the breaking down of 
men's confidences, the going to pieces of men's 
plans, — failure means many things. One of the 
things which it means is this : that God will not let 
the soul hide behind any protection which He knows 
is insecure. His whole love binds Him to let the 
soul know its blunder before it is too late. The 
general goes through the field where his army lies 
full in the face of the enemy. He sees each soldier 
building his little section of the rampart which, all 
together, is to protect the army. What shall he do 



g6 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

when he comes to one poor fellow who, instead of 
piling up stones, is twisting bits of straw together 
and making an ingenious, pretty fence that the wing 
of a flying bird might knock away ? Is it cruelty 
when the wise general with his drawn sword cuts the 
flimsy fabric down, and leaves the silly soldier 
ashamed, perhaps angry, but convicted and exposed 
and ready for better work ? So a young man lays 
out his plans; says, " I will be this, I will do this, I 
will think this"; devises how he will construct his 
fragment of the long wall that all true men are 
building, which is to stand between human nature 
and its enemies. He thinks his plans are perfect, 
and then they all fail. What does it mean ? It may 
mean many things. It is blessed, indeed, if the 
young man can learn, there at the very outset of 
his life, that one of the things which it means is 
this: that his Father loves him so, and has such 
great things for him to be and do, that He wants 
him to trust His love completely — His love and 
nothing else, — so that He may be able to give Him- 
self completely to His child. In such an early fail- 
ure of his first bright hopes has been the light and 
salvation of many a man's life. 

Sometimes it is an old man and not a young man 
to whom the failure comes. When, as the evening 
gathers in, a man for whom life has seemed but one 
long success looks up, and lo ! much that has seemed 
success has changed its whole aspect and is evidently 
failure; when, not because he has had enough of 
them and is tired of them, but because he has come 
into the fuller light and sees them as they really are, 



THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 97 

the ambitions, and pleasures, and occupations in 
which he has spent his days look empty and dreary 
and worthless to him ; when the old man stands and 
says of his long life, " What a long failure!" — is 
there no meaning of love and kindness in that 
revelation which has come to him, at the very last, 
from his patient and loving God ? Blessed, indeed, 
it is for him if, at the very last, standing among the 
ruins of the battlements which it has been the busi- 
ness of his life to build, he can in utter despair of 
himself give himself penitently and absolutely up to 
God, and look forward to the joy of testifying by 
the long obedience of eternity his thankfulness for 
the mercy which, before his life here was wholly 
over, has scattered its delusions and shown him his 
weakness and his sin, 

I hope that I have not seemed to preach to you 
as if God were a mere destroyer, jealously taking 
away out of our lives the things He did not like, 
tearing away the poor defences that we had patched 
up for our prosperity, our peace, our reputation, 
and our faith, but giving us nothing in their place. 
I have tried to say all along that all of God's de- 
structions are only to make way for stronger build- 
ing of His own. Let me tell you that as earnestly 
as I can before I close. For everything human and 
weak that God tears out of your life He has some- 
thing strong and divine to put in it. He takes 
away the battlements of selfishness only that He 
may defend you with Himself. Everything which 
you have a right to do at all, and which you are 



98 THE BATTLEMENTS OF THE LORD 

doing now in self-reliance, it is possible for you to do 
in direct reliance upon Him ; and our lives so be- 
long to His life that it is only when the healthy ac- 
tivities of life are based upon and built around by 
trust in God that the noble capacity of those activi- 
ties comes out and the whole life shines; and the 
old Jerusalem which sat upon her earthly hill be- 
comes the New Jerusalem which is hung down from 
heaven by the golden chains of God's love. 

If the work of Christ for a man's soul is to fill it 
with complete humility, and then, when it is utterly 
humbled and made distrustful of itself, to bid it 
stand up upon its feet and bravely begin the new 
life with trust in Him, — then is it not Christ, the 
Lord to whom we must be always coming back, of 
whom I really have been preaching to you to-day ? 
Oh, that from all our souls He may tear away every 
falsehood, every shelter of sin, no matter what it 
costs us, no matter how it seems as if He tore our 
heart out with it. And then, where these used to 
be, oh, that He may set Himself, knitting His life 
into our life by the meeting of repentance and par- 
don, of grace and gratitude, making Himself our 
tower, hiding us safely forever and ever behind the 
battlements of His love ! 



VI. 

CHRIST OUR LIFE. 

44 In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk." — 
Acts iii. 6. 

Everywhere power is seeking opportunity, and 
fulness is seeking need, throughout the universe of 
God. The teeming hills send their streams down 
into the thirsty plains. The winds rush in to fill 
the vacant fields of space. Knowledge is always 
trying to widen its field and fill with its abundance 
some new emptiness of ignorance. The search is 
mutual and, going on everywhere, it makes the 
unity of the vast world. The mighty globe is 
bound together by these cords of power running out 
in help, and need running out in appeal, all over its 
surface. 

Add to this another truth, — that all the power and 
all the richness in the world are really one, are really 
God, — that, take what form they will, come through 
what channels they may, they all proceeds from one 
great central Love and Abundance, which is God, — 
and then the unity is more complete and more im- 
pressive. Then the study of the endless variety of 
the channels through which the power and supply 

of God flow into needy places becomes supremely 
LofC. 



IOO CHRIST OUR LIFE 

interesting. The schoolmaster is teaching his scholar 
in the school. The philanthropist is freeing the 
slave out of his bondage. The father is feeding the 
children at his table. The artist is painting his pic- 
ture on the wall. The farmer is turning the forest 
to a fruitful field. The merchant is making the 
world the master of its wealth. How various are 
the activities ! How the earth quivers and sparkles 
with their abundance and their difference! But if 
we believe and if we say that they all come from 
God, that, in a sense, they all are God uttering and 
giving Himself in many ways, through many chan- 
nels, is not the sight then far more wonderful and 
beautiful ? It has gained loftiness and unity with- 
out losing distinctness and variety. And each one 
of the channels through which flow the power and 
abundance of God, no longer counting itself a 
spring of original supply, must find a profounder 
dignity and interest in itself and catch infinite vis- 
ions of what may be accomplished and attained 
through it. V. The schoolmaster opens his books and 
says, " Here is God's truth." The emancipator 
says to the slave, " Go forth into God's freedom/' 
The father invites his children to come and eat the 
bread of God. The artist feels thrilling through 
his soul and his brush some of God's beauty. The 
farmer and the merchant open the field or the ocean 
that the bounty of God may flow through them. 
Has not each found its nobleness ? Is not each full 
of dignity ? May not each think of itself as incapa- 
ble of comparison with any other, because, whatever 
of God's power any other channel may bring, there 



CHRIST OUR LIFE IOI 

is something of God which must come through this 
and this alone ? 

I am led to these thoughts as I consider the dis- 
ciples of Jesus when, after their Lord had passed 
out of their sight, they found His power beginning 
to use them for its channels. Peter and John went 
up to the Temple and at the gate they found the 
lame man lying. He called to them for alms, and 
though they had no money which they could give 
him, something began to stir within them. How 
they must have wondered at themselves! A 
thought, a dream, a hope that possibly they might 
do something more than drop a penny in his out- 
stretched hand, — a strange, unreasonable wish that 
they might actually lift him up and set him on his 
feet, and give strength to his poor, tottering ankle- 
bones and make him walk. How they must have 
wondered at themselves ! Deep feelings were stir- 
ring in their souls — not merely pity for the man's 
misery, though that was there, but other feelings, 
— a sense of the sadness of weak limbs and defective 
life, a longing for the completeness of vitality, a per- 
ception of the mysterious unity of life, so that he 
who had most of it ought to be able to give it to 
those who had least, — all of these emotions the 
disciples must have found moving tumultuously in 
their hearts, and they must have been amazed. 
Was this some new-discovered quality and power in 
themselves, something which had been sleeping un- 
suspected in them ever since they were boys in 
Capernaum and Bethsaida ? Why was it that they 
had never dreamed of any such capacity before ? 



102 CHRIST OUR LIFE 

And then they said to themselves: " This has come 
to us since we had to do with Jesus. It is since we 
were His disciples that this new power began to stir 
within us." And then they must have said : " It is 
the same which stirred in Him. Do you not re- 
member how we used to see the same in His face 
which now is in ourselves ? He too was full of pity, 
and loved life, and counted the loss or the defect of 
life a woe, and tried to give of His own life to 
others." They remembered all this in Jesus; and 
then they came back to themselves and all was clear. 
All this was in them as they belonged to Him. It 
was in them because it was in Him. This desire 
and power to heal was His, not theirs. He was 
the spring and fountain out of which the divine 
water flowed. They were only the channels down 
which it poured to its result. 

Everything must have become credible to them 
when they understood that. They could believe in 
the power when it was not theirs, but His. The 
channel could open itself freely when it felt the 
stream behind it. And so they looked into the lame 
man's face and said: " In the name of Jesus Christ 
of Nazareth, rise up and walk. ,, And he obeyed. 

The critical moment which came then to the dis- 
ciples is always coming to whoever is called to ex- 
ercise power in the world. He who is moved to do 
something is either a fountain and source of power, 
or else he is a channel of power through which 
comes the efficiency of God. Which is he ? Which 
are you ? According to the answer to that question 
comes the whole nature and degree of the man's 



CHRIST OUR LIFE IO3 

efficiency. Very silently, often very unconsciously, 
the answer to that question is being given. Every- 
where men, who are doing the same outward work, 
part with each other when the answer has been 
given one way for one and another for the other. 
He only enters on the highest life who decides fully 
for himself that he is but a channel of power, and 
thenceforth feels behind himself the movement of the 
infinite life, and does all things in the name of Christ. 
I want to trace out with you what some of the 
consequences in life will be of such a fundamental 
conviction with regard to the source of power. But 
first I want you to feel how absolutely universal is 
the possibility of that conception. It applies to 
everything. Whatever a man does, no matter how 
secular he chooses to call his action, he may do it 
in the name of Christ. The divine power working 
behind him, using him for the channel of its utter- 
ance, that is what does everything. Not merely the 
acts which we call sacred, but everything is done by 
God, and the man only opens his life to God's effi- 
ciency. Not wickedness, indeed, — and there wick- 
edness seems to appear as that which it has so often 
been described to be, — negation, death, the ceasing 
of activity. It is the ceasing of the activity of God, 
interrupted and interfered with by the will of man ; 
but all good action, all healthy activity, however 
secular it seems to be, is really God, declaring Him- 
self and uttering his power through the appropriate 
channel of the life of man. And the acting man 
who is aware of this, claims it and declares it as he 
does His action, " In the name of Christ. ,, 



104 CHRIST OUR LIFE 

I. I ask you to notice, in the first place, how such 
a conception as this establishes the nobleness of life. 
Our life feels everywhere the lack of nobleness. 
Very pathetic, almost the most pathetic thing we 
see, I think, is the effort which men make every- 
where to compel life to look noble, — when in their 
hearts they feel deep suspicions that it is not noble, 
but ignoble all the while. They make artificial mo- 
tives for it which are not its real ones. They make 
fellowships with other men who are living the same 
life as themselves, as if that would look dignified 
and precious in the multitude which was base and 
petty in the single worker. They declaim about the 
dignity of all labor. Or, if they have to give up in 
despair the effort to glorify their own vocation, they 
take some avocation, some outside work which 
seems to deal with nobler things, and try in that to 
find some nobler color for their lives. How many 
men, pressed by the bondage of necessity, driven 
each morning to their work, are thus pathetically, 
sometimes very beautifully, trying to find or feign 
for their lives a nobleness which all the time they 
feel is lacking. 

And now, what is there which can really do for 
men what they are thus pathetically trying to do for 
themselves ? What can take your life and ennoble 
it, O my friend ? If really Christ could be felt be- 
hind it, and it could all be really an utterance of 
Him, would not the work be done ? If you could 
genuinely know that it was His will which was find- 
ing fulfilment in what you did, whether your work 
were the writing of state papers or the building of 



CHRIST OUR LIFE 105 

bricks into the wall, so that as you shaped a new 
sentence or spread a new layer of mortar you could 
say, " In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth/' 
would not the spell of sordidness be broken, the sus- 
picion of pettiness be dissipated from your life ? We 
are dominated and confused by two things — the ac- 
cidents of our surroundings and the opinions of our 
brethren. Many a soul really doing brave and use- 
ful work struggles and writhes under the burden of 
these two oppressions. They are both gone, they 
disappear, they crush us down no longer, just so soon 
as our work becomes Christ's work and not we but 
He is really doing it, and we are doing it only in 
His name. 

Be sure, O, my young friends, that you are do- 
ing something honest, human, useful — no matter 
how humble or useful it may be — and then this no- 
bleness waits at your doors. Be doing something 
of which it is conceivable that a man can say, " In 
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth I do this 
thing/' A man can say that who drives sheep or 
digs a ditch. A man cannot say that who sells liquor 
to make his fellow creatures brutes, or who forces 
his dollars out of the crowded tenement where men's 
and women's and children's souls are ruined. Be 
something, do something, of which you can say, 
" Christ does it! I do it in Christ's name," and 
then nobleness waits at your door. Any moment it 
may enter in, and sordidness and pettiness give way 
at its coming. 

This which I am preaching is, I think, the full, 
real meaning of that phrase which fascinates us with 



106 CHRIST OUR LIFE 

its sound, but whose exact definition some of us 
perhaps have found it hard to give. " In the name 
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk." It is 
the idea of all power finding its source in Him. It 
involves all the various thoughts with regard to 
the disciple's relation to his Lord, which come to 
their combined consummation in the complete 
dedication of the disciple's life, making it altogether 
the servant and expression of the Master's will. 
Gratitude is in it, admiration is there, love which 
desires communion, the sense of oneness of intrin- 
sic nature, — all these press the man-life on the 
Christ-life and make it aware that its true glory and 
effectiveness is in uttering Him. All this I take to 
be wrapped up in those rich words: " In the name 
of Christ." 

2. And notice, in the second place, how in what 
these words express there lies the true secret of the 
unity of various lives. There are two notions of 
unity in men's minds. One of them is really the no- 
tion of uniformity. It has no place for diversity. It 
wants almost complete identity between the things 
which it compares. The other rejoices in diversity, 
and finds its unifying principle in the common mo- 
tive or purpose out of which an infinite diversity of 
many actions may proceed. How vain the search 
for any unity but this! It is the unity of nature. 
The budding, bursting spring is full of it ; a thou- 
sand trees all different from one another are all one 
in the oneness of the great life-power which throbs 
and pulsates in them all. And souls the most un- 
like, most widely separated from each other, are one 



CHRIST OUR LIFE 107 

in Christ. Christ is their principle of unity. The 
thinker pondering deep problems, the workman 
struggling with the obstinacy of material, the wor- 
shipper lost in his adoration, the men of all centu- 
ries, the men of all lands, — they are all one, if all 
their lives are utterances of the same Christ. It 
seems to me to be beautiful, the way in which each 
new Christian strikes into this unity and becomes a 
part of it immediately. A man has been living by 
himself, seeming to find all his sources of activity in 
his own life. By and by the change comes and he 
is Christ's. The pulse of universal Christian life be- 
gins to beat through him. Now he is one with all 
men who, anywhere, are doing anything by Christ 
for Christ! How he lays hold of and comprehends 
the ages! All the past is his; he knows what men 
were doing in the days of Abraham and David. All 
the future is his; he knows what men will be doing in 
the millennium, — not the forms of their activity, but 
its heart and soul, its meaning and its spiritual ex- 
perience. All this he knows the moment that he has 
begun to do his special work " in the name of Jesus 
Christ of Nazareth." He is set into the living sys- 
tem. The star is taken up by the chorus of the stars 
and joins their music. Still the man goes on at his 
little work, — adding up figures, selling goods, driving 
his little machine, — but he is one with the greatest; 
he is one with the least. O, that the children 
might learn that, and feel their lives from the be- 
ginning set into the unity of that utterance of Christ 
which is the complete activity of the world ! How 
much conceit among those who thought themselves 



108 CHRIST OUR LIFE 

great, how much complaint among those who 
thought themselves little, such a conception of life 
would save ! 

3. It is time for me to touch another question 
which may have been suggested to you as I have 
spoken. " What effect," you will ask, " will this 
absorption into Christ have upon that development 
of personal distinctness, that character, that indi- 
viduality which all men who are anything desire to 
possess ? To do everything, to be everything, in 
Christ's name — will not that blur everything into in- 
distinctness and keep your life, my life, from stand- 
ing out vigorous and clear? Nay, in my own name 
let me live my life and do my work! " 

But surely this implies a narrow and crude 
thought of individuality. What is the Individual ? 
A being distinct not only in himself, but in all his 
peculiar relations to the Infinite and Total Being. It 
is in the relation to that mass of being upon which 
every individual being rests, and to which it belongs, 
that individuality asserts itself. Wycliffe, Howard, 
Napoleon, each of them is a distinct, distinguisha- 
ble figure among men. But how ? By the way in 
which he manifests our universal human nature, and 
by the effects which he produces on it. Take any 
one of them out of all connection with the universal 
human life, and while, no doubt, his distinctive 
personality would still be there, it would be a 
crippled, ineffective thing. It would find no op- 
portunity either of exhibition or of education. Put 
Wycliffe, or Howard, or Napoleon into his true 
place, and he shines with his own radiance and does 



CHRIST OUR LIFE IO9 

his own work because of his true own place in which 
he stands. You see to what this tends, — that the 
true and natural relations of a human life bring out 
and strengthen and do not destroy or hide its indi- 
viduality. You put a solitary man into a family, 
or into a warm friendship, and how his personality 
comes out! How much more of a man, how much 
more of this man which God meant for him to be, 
he is! 

Now, Christ is the most natural home of man. 
He is the human manifestation of Divinity. Where 
then as in Him shall man naturally implant himself 
and be at home ? And because the implanting of 
man in Christ is natural, and not unnatural, there- 
fore the individuality of him who is set in Christ is 
developed and not destroyed, and the Christian be- 
comes more and not less himself the more truly and 
devotedly he is a Christian. 

And the true Bible figure of the Church is also 
the home. It is the family of God. And so, while 
it keeps the great sense of comprehensive unity, it 
will never blur or stifle the freedom and variety and 
spontaneousness of individual life. 

Indeed, all true conception of originality and in- 
dividuality must include the truth of the necessary 
belonging of the individual in the great whole. No 
self is its whole self which is itself alone. Part of 
the selfhood of everything is its share in the com- 
plete being of which it is a part. Will you take the 
man and uproot him from all his belongings ? Take 
him out of his fatherhood, his business, his scholar- 
ship, his citizenship, his church, and then tell me, 



1 10 CHRIST OUR LIFE 

have you got him in his true personality ? Has not 
his personality disappeared with all those separa- 
tions ? The time may come when, loosing himself 
from all these associations, leaving them behind as 
outgrown things, the man's soul, pure and personal, 
shall soar away to some existence where they can 
have no place. But who can say into what new 
sceneries and societies of a celestial city, and a per- 
fected human family, and a triumphant church that 
freed soul shall unite itself, claiming anew its per- 
sonality in its associations ? And, however that 
may be, it certainly will come to pass that there the 
soul will fix itself in God, and realize its individu- 
ality and know itself in Him. 

If this be true, then men will become not less, 
but more themselves as they all feel behind their 
lives the Power of Jesus, and do all things in His 
name. It will be like the pouring of the sunlight on 
the earth, giving to everything a radiance which 
is the sun's and yet is the thing's own. It will be 
like the pouring of the brook down the dry channel, 
making each pebble shine with its true color. So 
acts burst into radiance when the great glory burns 
behind them. You are doing things with lower mo- 
tives, and so with lower powers (for the motives of 
deeds are the powers of deeds); and this change 
comes, the great love of Christ takes possession of 
you, you love Him with the overwhelming gratitude 
which acknowledges His love. Your life presses it- 
self in and occupies His life. His power fills you. 
" Not I live, but Christ," you cry, in Paul's great 
words. And then every act is yours with wonderful 



CHRIST OUR LIFE III 

and new distinctness. You and Christ are the unit 
of this new, strange life. Strange life ? Yes, but only 
strange as the absolutely natural is strange when it 
strikes into the midst of the unnatural which has 
possessed the world ; only strange as the whole is 
strange when, surging up from the depths, it takes 
possession of and overwhelms and harmonizes the 
parts! In that strange life each act, each thought, 
each word, flashes with light, glows with color, 
quivers with power, distinctive and unique, as it 
is done, or thought, or spoken in the name of Jesus 
Christ. 

What shall we say of our poor, colorless religion? 
What shall we think of our Church, which often 
seems to swamp and drown instead of bringing out 
lustrously the characters of those who live in it ? 
What can we think except that it has not really 
filled itself with its Master's power ? It does things 
which He could never do. It turns away from tasks 
which His soul longs for. It is not because they 
have given themselves to Him, but because they 
have given themselves to Him so partially, so fee- 
bly, that the members of His Church seem often to 
have lost instead of gaining personal distinctness 
and the full power of their own true life. You must 
go deeper into the stream which now only the tip 
of your foot is touching. You must be more of a 
Christian, not less. You must give yourself up 
heart and soul to Christ, that Christ may make you 
all yourself. Has not He Himself told the story ? 
You must lose your life utterly in Him that you 
may find it. 



112 CHRIST OUR LIFE 

Let me say only one thing more. The defect in 
a man's life is double. It is in the things he does 
not do, and it is in the things he does do. I have 
been thinking mostly about the things which a man 
does not do, and of how his activity would be stim- 
ulated if he felt behind all his life the Power of 
Christ. But consider the other side. Think how 
the soul which lived by Christ would become incapa- 
ble of many an action which, if he thought of his 
life as having no deeper sources than himself, he 
might freely do. He thinks of himself as an ut- 
terance of Christ. What Christ is He will be — • 
nothing else. What Christ does He will do — nothing 
else. " In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth " 
shall be the stamp which he will set on every action. 
Is not the range of his action limited at once ? He 
can do nothing which will not hold that seal, no- 
thing over which those words cannot be said. He 
raises his arm in passion to strike some defenceless 
creature a cruel and vindictive blow. " In the name 
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth," he says, and his arm 
falls powerless. He cannot strike. He sets out on 
some career of reputable deceit. He has his ap- 
proved lie all ready on his lips, but before he utters 
it, he says, " In the name of Jesus Christ of Naza- 
reth," and the lie is as impossible for him as for 
Christ Himself. Ah, how everywhere it is true that 
higher power means also more restraint ! To be able 
to do one thing means always not to be able to do 
something else. Let any man here in society accept 
Christ's power as his moving principle, and what 
then ? A hundred old familiar doors must close. 



CHRIST OUR LIFE 113 

But one great door opens, and through that he goes 
in to another life. 

Here, then, my friends, is the whole doctrine 
which I wished to preach. It is the great redemp- 
tion from a blank, narrow, and lonely thought of 
life, if there is behind us a vast Power of life by 
which we live and in whose name all that we do is 
done. Moses stands by the rock, about to smite it 
and bid the water flow. All God's omnipotence is 
behind him. All the love and care, all the infinite 
nature of God is waiting to utter itself through this 
poor Hebrew who stands, rod in hand, before the 
mountain. What opportunity there is for him to 
glorify his life! How he may become like a very 
right arm of the Almighty ! If he will only lift up 
his voice and cry, " In the name of God, let the 
water come for the thirsty people !" But listen, 
What is it that he says? " Hear now, ye rebels! 
must /bring you water out of this rock ?" How 
the man shrinks and shrivels as we look at him and 
hear him speak! Just he, and nothing more! his 
little, narrow personality. Just Moses. Nay, not 
Moses! for the true Moses is Moses full of God, and 
this Moses who speaks has cast God away, and so 
he is not really his whole self. No wonder that that 
losing of his chance to be his best was the beginning 
of his death ! We all begin to die when we let go 
the chance to live our fullest life. 

May God help us to give ourselves to Christ, who, 
as St. Paul says, " is our life," so that He may flow 
freely forth through us. May we do all things " in 
His name." May we do nothing which we cannot 

8 



114 CHRIST OUR LIFE 

do " in His name." So may some of His work get 
done through us, and we, in doing it, grow strong 
and pure and unselfish and like Him, becoming so 
our own true selves. 



VII. 

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER. 

" Am I my brother's keeper ? " — Genesis iv. 9. 

The first chapters of the Book of Genesis still 
keep their hold on human life. Indeed, it some- 
times seems as if the difficult and puzzling questions 
which have been raised concerning them had tight- 
ened that hold instead of loosening it. Many men 
at least have come to see that, whatever may be 
the fact with regard to the historical nature of the 
record which is written there, the narrative has a 
spiritual truth as a description of man's perpetual 
experience, which is most valuable and never can 
lose its power. Much in those chapters may per- 
plex us, but yet its pictures never fade out of our 
sight nor lose their meaning for our consciences. 

The new-made garden with its freshness of spark- 
ling stream and waving tree and bounteous grass ; the 
man, first alone and then with his life richened and 
deepened by the woman's presence at his side; the 
mystic catastrophe of the disobedient eating of the 
apple; the gateway with the angels and the flashing, 
flaming sword and the poor man and woman terri- 
fied and desolate outside; then the new poetry and 
pathos that came into the world with the first family 

115 



Il6 MY brother's keeper 

life; the birth of the first children, the first boys the 
world had ever seen; and then, all of a sudden, 
bursting like a thunderbolt out of the sky, hatred 
and murder! How that picture has fastened itself in 
men's hearts! The dreadful, forsaken plain where 
one brother lies dead beside the smouldering altar, 
while the other brother wanders far away with the 
irrevocable deed burning at his soul, trying in such 
hopeless despair to make himself believe that he is 
not the wretch he knows himself to be, answering 
the voice of God which speaks to him from without 
and from within with this angry and helpless and 
passionate rejection of responsibility, " Am I my 
brother's keeper ? " 

I take this last picture out of the old Book of 
Genesis to-day. Very different indeed is this wild 
son of Adam, roaming desperate through the pri- 
meval earth, from the decent and reputable citizen of 
our modern world on whose lips to-day we can al- 
most hear the same question which came forth from 
the mouth of Cain. But the words are the same. 
To-day the same disclaimer of responsibility shows 
how disordered is our world. Still men who ought 
to know and care how it is faring with their brother- 
men refuse to know, refuse to care. We may leave 
Cain in his far-away remoteness and, turning to our 
own present days, ask ourselves the meaning of- 
man's indifference to his fellow-man, ask what the 
meaning is of that which so many men say in their 
hearts when they are bidden to hold themselves re- 
sponsible for the lives of other men, " Am I my 
brother's keeper ? " 



MY BROTHERS KEEPER 117 

And, first of all, I think, we ought to remember 
how difficult it always is for men to imagine them- 
selves into a way of life of which they have had no 
experience or trial, and not to let that difficulty im- 
pose on us. It may be the very way of life for 
which they were made. The life which they are liv- 
ing may be most imperfect and unnatural, but when 
you say to one of them, " Come here! Be this! " 
he turns upon you in unfeigned surprise. The 
whole thing looks impossible. You say to the idler, 
" Come, be a scholar. Taste the fascination of great 
books ' ' ; and he replies, ' * I cannot. Other men were 
made to study, but not I." You say to the selfish 
man, "Come, here is need, relieve it " ; and he looks 
you in the face as if you had asked him to climb to 
the stars. You say to the undevout man, " Come, 
be religious. Come, love and worship God"; and 
he replies, " You do not know me. You are taking 
me for another kind of man. It is as if you asked 
an eagle to swim for you or a fish to sing." All the 
time, in each man lies sleeping the power whose 
possession he denies, and in the use of which alone 
can he attain to his true life. Do we not come to 
feel how almost absolutely worthless are men's de- 
scriptions of their own impossibilities ? Whatever 
is of the general substance of noble humanity, every 
man may be in his degree. For a man to stand up 
and say," I cannot learn" ; " I cannot be gener- 
ous " ; '** I cannot be devout, ' ' proves only how little 
he knows himself. 

Once, I think, I used to be imposed on by such 
statements. Once, when a man said any of these 



Il8 MY brother's keeper 

things about himself, it seemed as if it might be 
true, as if here might be a man in whom this one 
capacity of manhood had been left out; but so con- 
stantly the flowers have broken out of such unlikely 
soils, so often the darkest heavens have burst forth 
in unexpected stars, that it has come to seem as if 
no man's assertion of his own deficiency were trust- 
worthy. " God knew things of him that he did not 
know of himself," we say when some new life opens 
upon a man who thought he had exhausted his ca- 
pacity of living. 

Let us be taught by such sights. Let us apply to 
ourselves the lesson that they teach. Let us beware 
of drawing hard and fast the line of our own limita- 
tions. Trust the impulsive leap of heart which tells 
you, when you read the life of Agassiz or of Living- 
stone, that you too might be a devotee of science or 
an enthusiastic missionary. Expect surprises out of 
the bosom of a life which God made, and which you 
whom He has set to live in it only half realize, — as 
a tenant who came but yesterday into a palace only 
half knows the mystery and richness of the great 
house where he has been sent to live. 

Now all of this applies, I think, exactly to the sub- 
ject of which I want to speak to you. Here comes 
the demand that every man should be the keeper of] 
his brother-man. That means, that whatever may be 
the care which a man takes of his own life, however he 
watches it and tends it, he has not done his duty, he 
has not filled out his existence, unless he also has, just 
as far as he possesses the ability and chance, watched 
and protected and helped the lives of other people. 



MY BROTHER'S KEEPER II9 

Now what shall we say of that demand? It seems 
to me that until we think carefully about it, we have 
no idea of what multitudes of people there are to 
whom such a demand, made definitely of them, must 
and does seem absolutely preposterous and absurd. 
They may feel that somebody ought to do it, that 
there are people for whom it is possible and alto- 
gether right that they should go burdened with the 
care for others, just as there are people to dig the 
ditches and to build the fences, but for them it is 
totally out of the question, as totally unreasonable 
as to ask them to take the shovel in their hands. 

Meet one of our gilded youth upon the street, 
one of those boys who was born and has grown up 
in luxury, and has never had any self-control asked 
of him except that he should not complain of the 
monotony of luxury in which he lived. Stop him 
an instant and point him to a poor, wretched crip- 
ple toiling along under a heavy burden, with pov- 
erty in every line of his poor, haggard face. Ask 
your bright, glittering young friend what it means 
that that poor creature is so poor, and why he 
should not in some way help him ? and there is 
something infinitely sad and touching in the trans- 
parent honesty with which he looks you in the face 
and tells you that it is no affair of his. Perhaps he 
does remember that somewhere there is a charity 
bureau to which the poor creature might be sent. 
Perhaps he vaguely fumbles in his brain to find some 
remnants of what he distantly remembers to have 
been taught in college about the political economy of 
pauperism ; but that it is his business to undertake 



120 MY BROTHER S KEEPER 

personally, with thought and care, the relief of 
that poor sufferer! — you might as well tell him that 
it is his place to go and find the sources of the 
Nile. 

Stand at the door of a fashionable club-house and 
call for recruits, earnest and self-sacrificing, in the 
work of political reform, or the freeing of slaves, or 
the repressing of intemperance, — why ! I can hear 
even now, as I stand here, the empty, noisy laugh- 
ter that comes back in answer to your summons. 
Nay, lift up your voice in a much nobler place. Cry 
aloud in the halls of learning, talk to the student at 
his desk and tell him how hosts of his fellow-men 
want the crumbs from his table, want the inspira- 
tion of his teaching presence ; and what a blank un- 
consciousness is in his eye as he turns back to his 
problem, wondering how any man could dream that 
he ought to even feel, in his sublime search for ab- 
solute truth, the base and elementary needs of this 
ignorant multitude, whose very crude craving after 
knowledge shows how little they really know of what 
learning is. 

Do you recognize these people whom I thus de- 
scribe ? Are they not real ? Are they not common ? 
Are they not specimens of many others? And what 
does the existence of such people mean ? Does itl 
not mean that there are in the world very many in 41 
telligent people who do not in the least believe that 
they have any responsibility for other people ? 
Somebody has, they think. There are the ministers. 
There are the managers of philanthropic institu- 
tions. There is the "benevolent public/ ' But they 



MY BROTHERS KEEPER 121 

have no such responsibility. They are nobody's V 
keepers but their own. 

Such a condition of things, such a wide-spread 
conception of life which robs the world of so much 
strength and helpfulness, is certainly most signifi- 
cant and demands our thoughtful study. And the 
first thought which it suggests is this: that men/ 
have been too apt to think of helpfulness to their 
brother-men as an accidental privilege or an excep- 
tional duty of human life, and not as a true and es- 
sential part of humanity, without whose presence 
humanity is not complete. See what I mean. A 
beautiful voice is an exceptional privilege of a few 
extraordinary people among mankind. He who finds 
it in himself thinks of it, according as he is devout 
or undevout, as a gracious gift of God or as a happy 
accident. In either case it is a personal and special 
thing. It does not belong to this man because he 
is a man, in very virtue of his manhood. Other 
men are destitute of it, and cannot sing any more 
than the stone upon the hillside, and yet they are 
as truly men as he. But a man has two arms, and 
the feeling about them is immediately and intrinsi- 
cally different. They are not the exception. They 
are the constant human rule. It is not a privilege 
to have them. The man who is without them, the 
man who has one arm or none, — he is the exception. 
He is, just in that degree, just to that extent, de- 
ficient in his humanity. He is not a total man ; he 
is a fragment or a monster. The loss may have 
come nobly, by some great self-exposure which it 
was glorious for him to make ; nevertheless, he has 



122 MY BROTHER S KEEPER 

suffered a detraction from the completeness of his 
humanity, and is partly not a man. 

Here, then, there are two kinds or classes of pos- 
sessions, and you see the difference between them. 
One of them is a peculiar privilege. The other is a 
test and proof-mark of humanity. Not to have the 
beautiful voice is to lack a lovely ornament and dec- 
oration of the life ; not to have two arms is to lack 
a portion of the life itself. 

And now is it not true that a large part of the 
trouble, in this matter of men's helpfulness to their 
fellow-men, has come from the fact that helpfulness 
to brother-man has been put into the wrong class ? 
It has seemed to be like the beautiful voice, a 
special, splendid privilege and gift ; not like the two 
arms, a test and proof-mark of humanity. The man 
who had it has seemed to be something more, in- 
stead of the man who did not have it seeming some- 
thing less than man. Often and often the man who 
never dreamed of anything for himself except a sel- 
fish life has gazed with honest admiration on the 
men who could not rest until their brethren's need 
had been relieved; but it has been as the snake 
might watch the eagle soaring in the sky, or as you 
and I might listen to the singing of an angel, — never 
stirred either to shame or emulation by it, because 
it all came by a power which we did not possess. 

Suppose all that were altered. Suppose you and 
I really knew that in us, too, as a true part of our 
humanity, there was the angelic power of song; 
suppose the selfish man really believed that for him 
to be selfish was as true a loss of the completeness 



MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 123 

of his manhood as it would be for him to be lame or 
dumb; would not the whole aspect of the case be 
different ? Would not the rule and the exception 
have changed places ? Now, not the wonder and 
the praises and the garlands for the rare servant of 
his brethren, but the pity and the shame and the 
sense of loss for him who dared to live for himself 
alone, and leave his brethren unhelped. Now, not 
the mean and stingy question, "Why?" but the 
generous demand, " Why not ? " 

Sometimes, when we think how some one change 
would regenerate the world, we grow buoyant with 
hope, for it seems as if that one change might come 
to-day. But then, when we think how vast that one 
change is our hearts almost despair, for it seems 
hopeless. But this change is not hopeless. That 
men should come some day actually and practically 
to believe and feel that a man who takes none of the 
responsibility of other men's lives upon himself is a 
fragment of a man — that is not hopeless. There are 
some men, and not a few, who believe and feel that 
to-day, and who are trying to complete themselves, 
— not to win an extra-human ornament and grace, 
but to complete their human selves in sympathy 
and brother-help. I think that very often, in the 
most selfish man, there must sometimes come, with 
the recognition of his uselessness, a blind thrill of 
dimly realized imperfection, as sometimes the man 
born without arms must feel the arms to which he 
has a human right trembling and craving life in his 
poor, maimed shoulders. And I believe that the 
constant impossibility of thinking of God without 



124 MY BROTHER S KEEPER 

thinking also of the necessity of care for man as a 
true part of His nature, does keep alive in some de- 
gree the sense, and does prepare for the time when 
the sense shall become universal, that man without 
the acceptance of responsibility for his brethren is 
only a fragment of a man. 

How we always come back to the same truth! 
Man must think better of himself, not worse, — must 
see the essential glory of his human nature to be 
more and not less rich and splendid than he sees it 
now, before he can be his best. 

It seems to me that one of the great indications 
of the fact that helpfulness of man to man is a true 
part of our human nature, and not a mere addition to 
it, appears in our constant experience of the impos- 
sibility of avoiding some sort of influence upon our' 
brethren. " Am I my brother's keeper ? " you say, 
when some one points out to you that another man 
beside you is going to his ruin, and begs you to 
save him, — " Am I my brother's keeper ? " you re- 
ply and turn away in scorn. There might be some 
small show of reason in it if you could turn away en- 
tirely, if it were possible for you to shut a wall 
around your life so that it could have no possible 
influence on his. But when you try it, you find how 
impossible that is. Little by little you learn that 
you must have something to do with your brother, 
with your brethren. 

The sense of that, when it has once taken posses- 
sion of a man, makes life so solemn ! There is noth- 
ing that you can do which does not make it either 
harder or easier for other men to live, and to live 



MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 12$ 

well. The little circle which your eye can trace is 
such a small part of your influence ! Deeds which 
you seem to have nothing to do with are really the 
results of the things you have done and been. 

Here is a poor suicide, who, in a frantic moment 
in some wretched room to-day, does that most cow- 
ardly and miserable sin, and with the pistol or the 
poison flees from the post where God had put him. 
You never saw the man. He never heard of you. 
Have you anything to do with his miserable dying ? 
If you have cheapened life; if you by sordidness 
and frivolity have made it seem a poor instead of a 
noble thing to live ; if you have consistently given 
to life the look of a luxury to be kept as long as it 
is pleasant, and to be flung away the minute it be- 
comes a burden, instead of a duty to be done at any 
cost, with any pains, till it is finished; if this has 
been the meaning of your life in the community 
and in the world, then you most certainly have 
something to do with that poor wretch's death. 
You helped to kill that suicide. 

Here is this poor soul in its trouble feeling about 
for God, unable to find Him, almost driven to de- 
spair for lack of faith. Have you anything to do 
with that ? How can you have ? You never temp- 
ted or disturbed his faith. You never talked scep- 
ticism to him. You never told him what a childish 
superstition you thought it to believe in God. But 
what then ? If you have lessened and lowered the 
world's faith by your base worldliness or wanton 
refusal to acknowledge spiritual forces in your own 
life, then you have poisoned the air which this 



126 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 

poor soul has breathed, and it is dying of your 
poison. 

Here is a social tragedy, — one of those awful 
crashes which come to a household when purity, 
which is the soul of household strength, is gone, 
and the poor wretched body it has left goes all to 
pieces at the first temptation. You never played the 
tempter there. You never struck the pillars of that 
house with the fire of your lustful passion. No, but 
you have made the atmosphere in the midst of which 
that house must stand a little heavier with corrup- 
tion through the sort of life that you have lived. 
You have made it by your life a little easier for a 
man to wrong a woman, or for a woman to disgrace 
her womanhood. These are the terrible necessities 
by which we are all beset and surrounded. I say, 
' I will do neither good nor evil to my brethren. I 
will just live my own life. ^ And the eternal com- 
pulsions of the universe laugh me to scorn. As well 
might one ray of the sunlight turn its radiance black, 
and think to darken nothing but itself. As well 
might one wave in the flowing river think that it 
could turn itself backward up the stream and make 
no confusion. It cannot be. You must do good 
or evil in this world. To say that you will do no 
good is to declare yourself the enemy of the human 
race. 

It is also ours to accept the gracious side of the 
same truth. If no man can be wicked and not do 
harm, so no man can be brave, strong, truthful, and 
generous, without doing good. That we ought 
never to forget. We need it constantly for encour- 



MY BROTHERS KEEPER \2J 

agement and strength. I said that if you cheapened 
life on you rested something of the responsibility 
of the suicide whom you never saw; and if you 
brought down the standard of social life, you had 
something to do with the mischief that comes in a 
household of which you have never heard. Is it not 
also true that, if you do anything to lift life and 
make it more precious, you are in some true sense 
the " keeper' ' of any poor tempted soul who is saved 
from his sin by virtue of the sense of the precious- 
ness of life which gathers round him, and sustains 
or shames him in his need? Here is a man all in de- 
spair. He is ready for anything. Murder, suicide — 
nothing seems to be too desperate for his reckless- 
ness. If he had lived three centuries ago he would 
have taken to the highway and robbed or killed, re- 
gardless of other men's lives or of his own. Be as 
cynical as you will about the condition of your own 
time and land, you must own that there is a vast, 
solid influence at work to keep a man back from 
such desperation now. That influence is made up 
of the aggregate goodness of all good men. Apart 
from and beyond the special persuasions of personal 
friends, remonstrating by word and example against 
his sins, there is for every wicked man a great pro- 
test of all the goodness in the world, pleading, re- 
buking, urging, tempting him to righteousness. To 
that great protest every good deed of every most 
insignificant good man or woman makes its contri- 
bution. The boy or girl at school, the housekeeper 
about her quiet tasks, the laborer in his enforced 
obscurity, the clerk at his desk of routine, the 



128 MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 

sewing-girl, the errand-boy, — not one of them can do 
his duty faithfully and riot make duty easier for all 
men everywhere; for the President in the White 
House and the philosopher in the midst of his great 
books. Not one of them but is his brother's keeper. 

Perhaps that is all true, you say, but what be- 
comes of the elements of intention and self-con- 
sciousness ? Does not this last doctrine bring the 
whole matter back into the region of selfishness 
again ? I try to be good and pure for my own sake, 
because so I best complete my own life and gain its 
best results and am most happy — because so my 
own soul is saved ; and then, incidentally, without 
my meaning it, some other men are helped in their 
temptations by my struggle. I am glad to know 
that my life, so far as it has been good, has had any 
such power, but, since I did not mean it, have I not 
been wholly selfish? Have I been my brother's 
keeper in any sense save that in which the uncon- 
scious air has fed him and the song of the unthink- 
ing bird perhaps has lightened his despondency and 
made him glad ? 

It is a natural question. But what if there should 
come to us out of our experience another know- 
ledge, — what if we should find that our lives are so 
closely bound up with our brethren's that we cannot 
thoroughly do our duty by ourselves unless we have 
them and their service in our minds ? What if we 
learn that our personal problems get their clearest 
light and our personal struggles their most persistent 
strength when we are caring that the world should 
come to righteousness ? What if then we should do 



MY BROTHERS KEEPER 129 

our duties distinctly as a contribution to the influ- 
ence which is to save the world? Is that impossible? 
I do not necessarily need to see exactly where my 
influence for good will tell. 

Some poor wretch appeals to my sympathies, 
and I am a brute if I will not reach down and 
pluck him out of any mire into which he has fallen. 
But surely the great wicked, needy world is not less 
pathetic than the single needy soul. Even more 
heroically unselfish than he who offers his example 
to a single tempted soul is the man to whom the 
whole world is always calling " Be pure!" " Be 
true!" " Be brave! " and who is pure and true and 
brave for the world's sake as well as for his own. 
Back and forth between the world and himself flow 
the great tides of influence. He keeps the world 
and the world keeps him. He and the world make 
one complete system of advancing holiness. It is 
the experience of Jesus — " For their sakes I sanc- 
tify myself," and " The glory which Thou hast 
given me I have given them." 

There is no subject with regard to which we feel 
so strongly as with regard to this — that if all men 
would do what a few men are doing the world would 
almost come at once to its salvation. It is a melan- 
choly thing to see how limited is the working of the 
impulses which, if they could be made universal, 
would fill the world with light and power. 

Look at this matter of care for fellow-man. In 
the community it appears as public spirit. How few 
men after all are public-spirited! How many men, 



130 my brother's keeper 

with the best principles in the world, are just as 
hopeless as so many stones or trees for any great 
public interest! A public charity is to be estab- 
lished or to be put upon a strong foundation ; a 
great improvement to the beauty of the city is de- 
manded; a gross wrong or injustice needs to be re- 
buked ; an old, stagnant condition of things must be 
disturbed and broken up ; — how any of us can tell 
the men who are to do it! How, the moment other 
men's names are mentioned, we instantly turn aside, 
or shake our heads and say, " Oh, no! There is no 
use in applying to them." Why not ? Are they 
immoral ? No, indeed ! Are they opposed to the 
public good ? Are they monsters who want the 
evils of bad government perpetuated, and who hate 
progress and improvement ? No, indeed ! None of 
these things! Simply they think it is no work of 
theirs. They keep their own souls clean, and all 
besides seems to be something superfluous and ex- 
tra, something which it would be a gratuitous piece 
* of enterprise for them to undertake. What a strange 
delight there is (showing how exceptional that is 
which ought to be so familiar) when any new young 
man among our citizens does some notable act 
which shows that thenceforth he is ready to be 
counted among those who hold themselves responsi- 
ble for the way in which things are going in their 
town. How few there are, when one more counts 
so mightily and wins such enthusiastic welcome ! 

The same thing is true in the Church. " The 
pillars of the Church/' we say, as if the Church were 
a great mass of inert atoms held up in place by a few 



MY BROTHERS KEEPER 13! 

sturdy columns on which the whole weight rested. 
The ideal Church is simply winged humanity — hu- 
manity with the pinions of faith all spread and mov- 
ing on with one great total impulse to the realization 
of the divine life for man. One's whole soul glows 
while he thus thinks of it ; and then he turns back 
and sees — what ? A handful of men and women 
who give nine tenths of the Church's contributions; 
a handful of men and women of intellect and piety 
who are willing to teach the Church's children and 
sit in the houses of the Church's poor; a handful of 
men and women who do the Church's thinking, and 
really grapple with the problems in which every 
true man who thinks honestly and seriously makes 
the puzzled life of other men more clear; and then 
a great host of men and women who never get be- 
yond the thought that the Christian Church is made 
to save their souls, and that they have joined the 
Christian Church purely for their souls' salvation. 

Your soul ! What is your soul ? What is it worth ? 
Is it worth all this, all that the Bible tells us of, all 
that Christ has been and is ? Ah^ yes, no doubt it is. 
That soul of yours is precious beyond anything that 
you can guess. All that Christ did, all that Christ 
is, nothing less than that is necessary for your soul's 
salvation. But, all the more because it is so pre- 
cious, what a shame it is that it is not pouring 
its power and value into the Church's life and finding 
its own salvation in saving the souls of other men ! 

The same is true everywhere. I go into any school 
or college in the land, and I know perfectly well 
what I shall find, — a great many good consciences, 



132 MY BROTHER S KEEPER 

a great many boys of high standards, and of 
pure lives, and an almost total absence on these 
students' parts of any notion that they have any 
duty as regards the low tone, the falsehood and im- 
purity, the frivolous or degraded dissipation which 
surrounds them. To keep their own souls pure, and 
let the college and their fellow-students go their 
way, — that is the most they dream of. That is 
where the student's faith goes, and often his in- 
tegrity goes with it. They are not used, and so 
they grow corrupt. They are selfish, and so they 
are weak. Oh, if the men who mean right for them- 
selves would only energetically mean right for the 
world, should we not almost see to-day the coming 
of the Son of Man ! 

Let me go back and close where I began. It is 
once more the earliest world, outside the gates of 
Eden. Abel lies dead upon the ground, and Cain is 
fleeing red-handed from the murder. But there is 
a third presence there. God is there. It is His 
voice that asks, " Where is Abel thy brother ?" 
And what a right He has to ask! It is the Father 
asking for His murdered child ! 

Is not this the great final truth about it all — that 
within the Fatherhood of God we are to know — 
there only can we fully know — our brotherhood to 
one another ? We neglect our brethren because we 
are so far from our God. Within His love, surround- 
ing us like the elemental life in which alone our souls 
can live, may we all learn to love our neighbors as 
ourselves, and to forget ourselves in serving them ! 



VIII. 
REST. 

11 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest." — Matthew xi. 28. 

I CANNOT begin to preach to you from these rich 
and familiar words without stopping a moment to 
remind you and myself what a sermon from this 
text ought to be. The words do not suggest or 
tempt any merely curious observations upon the or- 
dinary course of human life. Nor do they seem 
even to allow the general discussion of abstract 
themes, the elucidation of great topics of impersonal 
theology — if there be such a thing. Let other 
verses from the Bible lead the preacher and the 
hearer in those directions — no doubt there are times 
when it is good that we should follow them. But 
this, which is beyond question one of the best- 
known and best-loved of all the words of Christ, has 
quite a different suggestion. He who would preach 
from it must at least try to make sound in his peo- 
ple's ears the sacred, solemn invitation which the 
words contain. There is a sermon possible (would 
God that I could preach it!) which should cause 
everything else to be forgotten, and set the Saviour 
in the abundance of His power, in the completeness 

133 



134 REST 

of His love, before the faces of men weary and 
troubled and distressed, finding it hard to live, often 
overcome by what seems the impossibility of living 
truly and bravely ; and make them hear Him say to 
them, " Come unto me! " — a sermon which should 
feel the infinite sympathy of the words and of the 
soul from which they came, — a sermon which 
should reveal to somebody that there is a heart 
which pities him and which can satisfy him, — a ser- 
mon which should leave the hearer, when it closed, 
in full communion with the soul of Christ, and with 
the new divine life joyously begun. Who would not 
give anything to preach that sermon! 

Jerusalem was only a picture of the universal life 
of man. What goes on everywhere and always, 
was going on there. The streets were full of anxious 
faces. The houses were restless with uneasy hearts. 
Men were making plans and seeing them come to 
disappointment, and making them over again only 
to be still disappointed, till the heart was weary 
through and through, and only hoped on with the 
dead and brutish force of habit. Men were finding 
that the dearest affections, the most sacred relation- 
ships, carried misgivings and the power of untold 
misery at their hearts. Men were racing each other 
down for wealth, suspecting each other's character 
and motives, wondering whether the whole blind 
struggle were at all worth while. How familiar it 
all sounds! It is just what is going on to-day. And 
then, with perfect calmness, coming so quietly that 
He was there in the midst of them before they saw 
Him, came One who declared : " I can give you the 



REST 135 

escape from all this. I know it all, but I tell you 
that it need not be. Come unto me, all of you that 
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
Much is it when a child comes into a household 
or a world of weary and distracted men, and with 
his fresh and unsuspicious happiness rebukes it all, 
and, opening some simple and elemental vision of 
life, bears his bright testimony that this weariness 
and distraction need not be. It is easy to smile in 
our superiority and say: " He does not know. His 
disbelief in our misery comes from his childish igno- 
rance/ ' Even while we say that, we still feel the 
power of his protest, and come to him with some 
sense that we have escaped. But this is no child 
who speaks in Jerusalem. This is evidently a man 
who has not merely flitted above, but has pierced 
down below, the misery of human life. He will 
have these men, these brother-men of His, escape 
not merely by forgetting, but by understanding 
their weariness. As He looks them in the face, and 
the power of His being tells on theirs, we can see 
certain great changes taking place within them. 
Behold! things which used to matter very much to 
them begin to show their insignificance. And there 
are other things which they thought that they were 
missing altogether of which they suddenly or slowly 
come to see that they are getting the essence, 
though they are failing of the form. And there are 
other things, of which they become aware that they 
would find more joy in having their brethren possess 
them than in possessing them themselves; that in 
some deep, subtle, and true sense they themselves 



136 REST 

had what those whom they loved possessed. These, 
among other knowledges, passed over as it were 
from Jesus into them, almost as light passes over 
from the sun into the diamond and becomes its 
light, when they felt the invitation of His presence 
and came unto Him. So His Rest of Soul became 
their rest and His promise was fulfilled even before 
He uttered it, as are all God's promises. 

Words deepen their meaning, throb back their 
force to us out of a profounder and profounder 
heart, as we grasp them with a more and more in- 
tense experience. No doubt to " come to Christ " 
came to mean more and more to these men of Jeru- 
salem, and therefore the harmony of the effect with 
the cause, the sufficiency of the cause for its effect, 
in the promise of Jesus must have become more and 
more apparent. First, physical approach, the find- 
ing themselves where they could touch His hands 
and look into His face; and then obedience, the do- 
ing of what He wanted them to do and what would 
give Him pleasure; and then communion, the con- 
fidential interchange of thought, so that their think- 
ing enlarged and refined itself with His; and so, at 
last, likeness, the showing of His character, the 
coming themselves to be what Jesus was. Near- 
ness, obedience, communion, likeness, — these were 
the stages of approach, these were the opening 
chambers, room beyond room, by which men "came 
to Jesus." Only when all the rooms had been en- 
tered and occupied was the coming to Him complete, 
but at each stage it was just so much nearer to its 
completion. The invitation, as each man accepted 



REST 137 

it, throbbed with a deeper meaning. At the same 
moment, in every mingled group which fronted 
Him, there were souls which each depth of the in- 
vitation reached. It was the completeness of them 
all together that made the fulness of the power 
which drew the multitude after Him as He went 
up and down the land. 

This, then, is the old story out of which the words 
first came to us. Peace fell from the presence of 
Jesus upon the wearied and overburdened hearts of 
men who came to Him, who saw Him and obeyed 
Him, and confided in Him, and grew to be like 
Him. And now we want to remind ourselves of 
how it is that we come to have a right to transfer 
all that across the centuries and hear the same voice 
speaking in our ears. Remember we mean that in 
the most literal sense. I wish that I could state 
how literally I mean it. The summons of Christ to 
anxious humanity is not a memory of something 
which happened years ago ; it is something which is 
actually happening now, to-day. That involves and 
rests upon the facts that man is the same being that 
he was in the Gospel days and that Christ still lives. 

What then shall we say is the relation between 
that invitation to which eager souls listened in the 
streets of Jerusalem and the perpetual invitation 
which is always coming from the heart of Jesus to 
the soul of man ? Shall we not say that it is the 
same relation which always exists between a special 
event of the Incarnate Life and the continuous in- 
fluence of Jesus, — indeed, the same which exists 
between the whole Life of the Incarnation and the 



I38 REST 

perpetual presence of the Life of God under the life 
of man ? It was a particular manifestation of that 
which is universally true ; and therefore the univer- 
sal truth may be studied in and by that particular 
manifestation of it, while yet it does not lose itself 
and cease to be. It is the great fire which burns at 
the heart of all the earth breaking out at one vol- 
cano point. It is the sea on which the whole world 
floats, bursting through once in a fountain which 
strikes the stars. Let us not be the slaves of our 
senses, we who ought to be their masters and take 
the messages which they bring us into the keeping 
and interpretation of our souls. The words which 
the bodily lips of Jesus spoke, one day in Syria, do 
their full duty only when they quicken and inter- 
pret the utterance which His actually living, unseen 
heart is always making to our lives and souls to-day. 
With this in our mind, we see how absolutely 
reasonable, how perfectly true, is the conviction 
which has possessed millions of men and women, 
which is possessing countless numbers of men and 
women to-day, that they too may come to Jesus, to 
a present and living Jesus, just as literally and truly 
and blessedly as any man or woman came to Him 
in the old Syrian town. The whole sky opens, and 
what was then is everywhere and always, — Jesus is 
here ! We say it to each other here and now pre- 
cisely as men said it to each other there and then — 
Jesus is here! And men in sorrow look at a present 
Christ and are comforted. Glad men look up and 
are perfectly sure that He rejoices in their gladness. 
Perplexed men get light from Him upon their 



REST 139 

problems. Wicked men get first rebuke, and then 
forgiveness, and then the power of a new life from 
a Christ as truly visible to their souls as the Christ 
of Jerusalem was visible to the eyes of the men of 
Jerusalem. I would that I could put in clearer, 
stronger words how literally and absolutely this is 
true. Do not be slaves of your senses, — Christ is 
Here! Men are coming to Him every day. He 
says to you, " Come unto me," 

If we become sure of that, then all the text is 
ours, and He who speaks it is speaking it to us # 
Let us read it again and try to hear it so, with ears 
which know that it was meant for them, — " Come 
unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest." 

The first element of power in these words is their 
intense and intelligent sympathy with life. He who 
speaks them knows what it is for men to live. Tell 
me, could He have known it better if He had gone 
down the business streets of our city, if He had sat 
in our anxious counting-rooms and offices, if He had 
stood in the tempest of noise which fills the cham- 
bers of the roaring mill, if He had gone into the 
squalor of the tenement house, or climbed to the 
garret or pierced to the cellar of the pauper ? He 
had been in them all. He is in them all, and knows 
them all to-day. And the truth of His knowledge 
is testified by this — that it is to weariness and the 
sense of heavy burden that He appeals. 

Ah, my friends, if there were ever days when 
those words of Jesus ought to be heard, and to bear 
witness for themselves that He who speaks them is 



140 REST 

divine, they certainly are these days in which we 
live. They speak to the tumult of living. And was 
there ever a time when the tumult of living was 
so intense and universal as it is to-day ? It matters 
not what region of life you choose for your own : 
you live in the city or the country ; you are in the 
heart of poverty or in the heart of wealth ; you are 
in one business or another, — it makes no difference. 
Everywhere there is tumult. The street is full of 
furious emulation. The study is full of tireless dis- 
cussion. The capitol is wild with political debate. 
The household is torn with social ambition and un- 
rest. Was there ever a time when He who lifts up 
His voice and speaks to those who are wearied and 
heavy laden could so claim the hearts and con- 
sciousnesses of those who heard His voice ? 

We all know what it is to " take life hard/' The 
really practical problem is : How can the vitality of 
the world be maintained, and the fearful wear and 
tear of the world be mitigated ? The world rejoices 
in its exuberant vitality. It does not want to secure 
calmness and peace by death ; but it is conscious of 
perpetual exhaustion which it believes is not a ne- 
cessary part of its vital action, but a false and terrible 
attachment to it. The world dreams of a complete 
life which shall at the same time be free from fric- 
tion and full of rest. 

Here is a poor ship struggling through the sea. 
She is conquering the waves, but she is conquering 
them with terrible struggle. Every twist of the great 
water has her in its power. She creaks and groans 
in every strained and tortured plank. She is weary 



REST 141 

and heavy laden. And then there comes grandly 
and calmly sailing past this bruised and beaten ves- 
sel the great, sufficient steamer, fully competent for 
her task, conquering the sea instead of being con- 
quered, going faster and not slower than her groan- 
ing sister, by and by leaving her out of sight and 
coming into the port which they both are seeking 
whole weeks before her wrenched and battered sis- 
ter ship creeps in and lays herself beside the wharf. 
So man's dream of how he ought to live towers and 
shines beside and sails away past his consciousness 
of the way in which He is living. Whoever will 
speak to him and be heard must speak with the 
power of that dream, and tell him in some way how, 
without losing the energy of life, he shall still es- 
cape the weariness of life. That is the promise 
which he hears from the lips of Christ. 

To this man Christ says, " Come to me." It is 
the offer, the claim of a personal presence, and 
the acceptance must be in the spirit of that offer. 
Where shall we find the illustration of that method? 
Let us look for it in the simplest of all places : A 
child is wounded in body or in mind, hurt by some 
of the rough things which strike our human life al- 
most as soon as it is started on the earthly journey. 
He is standing with his bleeding breast, or bleeding 
soul, helpless and confused; and then his mother 
calls to him and says, " Come to me, my child"; 
and the poor little creature runs into her open arms 
and throws himself upon her pitying bosom. Does 
he find comfort there ? Indeed he does. And how ? 
By and by she staunches his blood and heals his 



142 REST 

wounds ; or, by and by, she reasons with his exas- 
perated spirit and sets it right ; but first of all it is 
more personal and elemental than that. She gives 
herself to him. It is to her that he comes. A doc- 
tor might dress his wounds. A teacher might cor- 
rect his blunders. Only a mother could take his 
heart to her heart, and, pouring nature into nature, 
give him strength. Why is it that you go to the 
friend whom you trust and love, when you are in 
trouble, for something which the wisest doctor or 
the shrewdest lawyer cannot give you ? It is that 
not merely kis, but he may take possession of you 
and be your healing. You sit beside him and he 
says no word ; but the peace of his presence and the 
healthy soundness of his heart and the richness of 
his love envelop you. All that he afterwards gives 
you of distinct rebuke, or counsel, or suggestion, 
gets its character and value from this first bestowal 
of himself, from this possession of your nature by 
his nature. Alas for any man who does not have 
some great sacred room of a brother's life into which 
he many go for rest and blessing! 

Now, any idea of the relation of a man to Christ 
is fundamentally imperfect and untrue to the 
New Testament, which has not, behind everything 
special and particular, a large and general concep- 
tion of what it is to come to Him, which corres- 
ponds to that which I have thus described. We 
sometimes ask ourselves how Jesus would have re- 
ceived such or such a man whom we know, if, in the 
same condition and state of mind in which we know 
him, he had come to Jesus in Jerusalem. The real 



REST I43 

question is not that. It is how Jesus does receive 
that man when that man comes to Him to-day. I 
know the man and I know Jesus now. I see the 
man come into the spiritual presence of Jesus just 
as literally as my friend comes into my physical 
presence when he crosses the threshold of my room. 
And then, this great thing happens. All that is in 
Jesus, all that Jesus is, welcomes him and takes him 
in. Jesus beholding him loves him. That is not 
merely an emotion in the Saviour's heart; it is an 
enfoldment of the Saviour's whole being around the 
man, as the mother enfolds herself about the child, 
as the friend enfolds himself about the friend. That 
is the welcome of Christ. To believe that that may 
happen is to believe in Christianity. To experience 
that is to be a Christian. 

Within this great conception all that the welcome 
and embrace of Christ may do for a man is enfolded 
and contained. They are the elements and constitu- 
ents and methods of this rest of the soul whose es- 
sence consists in the surrounding and possession 
of the soul by Christ. When the great concep- 
tion is thoroughly fixed and present with us, then 
we may look for those elements and give them 
their names and values. I have already enumera- 
ted in passing what they are. Let me remind you 
of them, and ask you to consider if you may not 
claim them in yourself. They are principally these 
four: 

1. He who is the friend of Christ sees some things 
to be insignificant which he once thought to be most 
important. What a power of restfulness is there! 



144 REST 

Some men seek it ignominiously. They say of the 
great and sacred things, of the things without which 
a man cannot be a real man : " I will not value this, 
because, If I value it, I shall seek it, and if I seek it 
I shall be in perpetual unrest/' That is base. But 
to see, as you keep company with Christ, that He 
perfectly does without that which you have lived as 
if you could not live without, — wealth or fame or 
luxury, — and so to see that you can live without it 
and be as much, nay, be much more, a man — is there 
not a great rest which comes to the soul with that ? 
There is hardly any restfulness so great as that 
which comes with the liberation from a false and un- 
natural and unnecessary desire. 

2. And then, he who comes to Christ enters into 
Christ's eternity and so into Christ's patience. 
There are other things which the soul desires not 
less, but vastly more, when it is given up to Him. 
Before, it wished for them languidly and with no stir 
of effort ; now, that those things should come to pass 
becomes the one passionate desire of its life. Only 
now, with the deeper knowledge of how great they 
are, the man not merely endures, but demands 
the necessity that they should come gradually, and 
is satisfied that their perfect attainment should be 
very far away. Christ gives him time enough. He 
does not relax his work for them ; he works all the 
harder. But he works calmly. The hurry fades 
out of his face. The rest of Time-Enough has come 
to him from Christ. 

3. And then, again, Christ spiritualizes and so 
enlarges my notion of the thing which I am seeking, 



REST 145 

and sometimes lets me see that I may freely have, 
perhaps that I have already, the soul of a desired 
attainment, and so sets me free from the feverish 
pursuit of a particular form of it which very possibly 
I never could attain. Here am I, saying, M I must 
and will have happiness," — meaning by happiness 
some special form of happy circumstances; and 
Christ, as I stand close to Him, says quietly : " Poor 
child, do you not see that you are happy now, or 
may be any moment that it is purely happiness you 
seek ?" And in an instant all is changed for me, 
and I am happy ; and the fever cools and dies. Is 
there no rest in such a revelation ? 

4. And then, once more, if I am really one with 
Christ, the whole humanity which is in Him rises 
around me and blends my personal life with it, so 
that what happens to it, in any of its least or far- 
thest members, truly and genuinely happens to me. 
All that humanity has, in some true sense, is mine. 
I pity you if you have never caught some glimpse 
of what that means. I need not know everything, 
for my race knows. I can be unhappy, if man is 
happy. Nay, not that, but, I am happy if man is 
happy. Let all that man has be mine, and lo! I 
possess much which I feverishly sought; and the 
search ceases, and there is a great calm. The peace 
of Him, who because He is the Son of Man carries 
the whole world in His heart, is mine. 

We count these elements in the rest which Jesus 
promises, and as we count them we are continually 
coming back to that which I have said at length al- 
ready, — that they are only elements within the great 



I46 REST 

personal bestowal of Himself which is the true and 
final rest which Christ bestows. 

But there is more than this, which I must lead 
you to before I close. To the great multitude who 
hear the words of invitation, and to whom they be- 
come very precious, there always sounds through 
them one word which is not written there, which I 
have not spoken yet, but which really sums up and 
expresses all their value. That word is " forgive- 
ness." The great burden and weariness of life, 
when any man has once become conscious of it, is 
sin. " I could bear anything if I had not done 
wrong/' the true man says. And then begins the 
turmoil of self-reproach and self-contempt, and long- 
ing for lost innocence, and fear of consequences, 
which beats and drives the poor, bewildered soul 
about as the sea beats about the wrecked ship, 
abandoned to its power. This is the great woe of the 
human soul, so great that all others while it lasts 
seem insignificant. It is almost a mockery to talk 
of everything else which Christ can do for man, 
until we tell first what He can do for man's sin. If 
He cannot save the ship from wreck, it is a mockery 
to say that He can keep the cabins from disorder 
and hold the masts in place. 

Therefore it is not strange that they who hear 
Christ's promise most of all rejoice in it because it 
offers them forgiveness of their sin. " He has ful- 
filled His word, He has given me rest," sings the 
released and happy soul. And what most glows in 
his heart, and trembles on his lips in the glad utter- 
ance, is this: " He has pardoned my sins. He has 



REST 147 

freed me from their guilt and power." Can any- 
thing satisfy you short of this ? Can anything be 
anything to you if you have not this above, beyond, 
around all other gifts ? Cry for forgiveness first of 
all, — " O God, be merciful to me a sinner." 

And yet, in all the intensity of the desire for for- 
giveness, we must not let forgiveness come to seem 
too special, separate, and narrow. Forgiveness is 
the total giving of the Divine to the human. There 
is no part of that complete bestowal which is not 
included in it. The great salvation is not divisible 
sharply into periods. There is no moment when the 
pardoned soul stands pure and colorless, with every 
penalty removed, with all God's anger disappeared, 
but with no holiness enveloping and filling it, — 
naked, with all its rags torn off, but with none of 
the new glorious raiment yet folded on its limbs. 
That would be a strange, awful moment in a spiri- 
tual history. Justified but not sanctified, as the old 
theologies would have said. No, it is by the pres- 
sure of His gifts of grace that God drives out the 
usurpations of the devil. It is by claiming the soul 
for His own that He sets it free from every false 
dominion. 

And so the rest which the forgiven sinner knows 
is one and the same with the rest which the re- 
claimed nature finds in its replacement in the obedi- 
ence of God. The saving of the wrecked ship is one 
and the same act with the commission which sends 
it forth on its appointed voyage. Sometimes the 
craving for forgiveness, intense as it is, has sounded 
almost soft and sentimental. It has seemed to be 



148 REST 

negative. The rest which it craved has seemed to 
be only a release from old bondage and a luxurious 
repose upon the assurance that M there remaineth 
now no condemnation.' ' Does not its salvation 
from such weakness lie in its vigorous identification 
with the soul's possession by the will of God ? The 
full freedom of the slave has not come with the 
mere breaking off his fetters ; it comes only when 
he has become part and parcel of the nation which 
has set him free. The drop of water rests in the 
stream only when the stream's life fills it and it 
moves with the great current of the stream towards 
the ocean. 

Wrestle, O sinner, with your sin ! Pray for for- 
giveness. Fix your eyes on the heights of sinless- 
ness and see their beauty. Hear in your deepest 
soul the voice of Him who has the power to forgive 
calling you to come and be forgiven. But always 
in the depths of that sweet summons hear the call 
to all obedience, and to the attainment by obedience 
of the entire life of God. O sinner in your sin, O 
mourner in your sorrow, there is rest for you ! The 
everlasting promise is for you. It is your Christ 
who says, " Come unto me! " You are the weary 
and heavy-laden one to whom He speaks. But it is 
all of Him that calls to all of you, and only when all 
of you — your obedience and grateful service result- 
ing in gradual likeness to Him you serve — has come 
to all of Him, — His authority and great designs and 
ardent inspirations, — only when all of you has come 
to all of Him can He complete the fulfilment of His 
promise, and give you perfect rest. 



REST 149 

This is the rest which remaineth for His people! 
This is the rest into which the brave young hearts 
and the brave old hearts who have gone forth out 
of our sight into His eternal world have entered. It 
is a rest full of vigor and activity, a rest which is the 
same that Christ's own soul enjoyed. It is His 
Peace. Behold ! He offers it to every one of 
you. Behold ! He stands before you, your Friend, 
your Lord, your Christ, and says to you, " Come 
unto me, O weary and heavy-laden man, and I will 
give you rest." May His voice so prevail with you 
that you shall come to Him ! 



IX. 

THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 

44 And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith 
unto him: Master, see what manner of stones and what 'buildings 
are here." — Mark xiii. i. 

It was the last week of Christ's life in Jerusalem. 
Every morning He walked in from Bethany and 
taught the people in the Temple, and went back 
again at night to the house of Lazarus and Martha 
and Mary. On the first evening, as they passed out 
of the temple between the great walls which sup- 
ported its vast area, the disciples with their Jewish 
pride in their queenly city pointed out its massive 
structure to Him: " Master, see what manner of 
stones and what buildings are here." 

It is no wonder that they were impressed with ad- 
miration. To the simple fishermen from Gallilee 
this superb masonry, whose remains still testify its 
greatness, must have seemed almost superhuman. 
They look to see their Master impressed, too. But 
here they are wholly disappointed. Jesus was ab- 
sorbed in something else. He was thinking about 
the moral and spiritual condition of the city whose 
material architecture was so superbly strong. With 
His eye set upon those things it was impossible that 

150 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 151 

He should be overcome by the mere size of stones 
and skill of masons work. " Seest thou these 
great buildings! "He exclaims. " There shall not 
be left one stone upon another that shall not be 
thrown down." He looked beyond these mighty 
works. He saw the life that lay behind them. He 
saw a rottenness of character which was really un- 
dermining the deep masonry. He could not value 
it as the disciples did. He could not answer their 
summons to join their admiration. He had gone 
beyond them, and was dwelling on something vastly 
more interesting and impressive. We can almost 
think we hear a certain yearning tone in the voice of 
Jesus as He felt how His deep absorption in the 
spiritual interests of His people had made Him in- 
capable of finding pleasure in the merely outward 
signs of their dignity and strength. 

And is not this the penalty of all enlightenment, 
— indeed, of all deepening of life of every sort ? It 
puts out of our power the pleasures and prides that 
we lived in while our lives were merely superficial. 
We give up admiring lower things as higher things 
absorb us more and more. You have a child for 
whom, for years, you have been desiring prosperity 
and popular regard. You have been proud that he 
has won them both. He has succeeded in business 
and he has made hosts of friends. But in the mean- 
time, you have become more of a man. You have 
acquired larger thoughts. You have come to the 
religious value of character. That a man should 
be pure and devoted and godly seems to you now 
to be the one needful thing. No wonder that your 



152 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

child wonders and is puzzled when, bringing into 
your presence his money and his fame, which used 
to give you so much pleasure, he finds that they do 
not impress you as they used to do. You are look- 
ing beyond them for something else in him which 
perhaps you do not find. 

Or, to take a case more similar to that of Christ 
and His disciples, you grow up with a strong, high 
pride in your country, — her vast extent, her lordly 
wealth, her noble buildings, her endless railways, all 
her prosperous life. But if, as you grow up, you 
come to know that the real prosperity of a land is 
not these things, if you come to ask for lofty ideas, 
for brave, true men, for domestic purity, for scrupu- 
lous regard for all men's rights; and if, not finding 
these so plentifully as your patriotic soul desires, 
your enthusiasm flags over the signs of material suc- 
cess, will you not sometimes almost feel that you 
have lost something in reaching these higher desires 
for your country which have tarnished your satisfac- 
tion in her material success ? Or, your friend waves 
the banner of his happiness before your eyes and 
cries, " Rejoice with me that I am happy." And 
you have to answer him, " I cannot rejoice with 
you as you want me to rejoice, because I see, for 
such as you are, so much greater and truer a happi- 
ness that you ought to be enjoying." Thus it is al- 
ways. Every advance in the standards of living, 
while it brings a man higher satisfactions, shuts him 
out from some lower ones. He can no longer go on 
his way " like a beast with lower pleasures, like a 
beast with lower pains.' ' Christ cannot glory with 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 1 53 

His disciples over the masonry of the temple as He 
cannot be terrified with them over the storm at sea. 
But all this introduces us to a question in answer 
to which I should like to offer you a few thoughts 
— the question of human impressibility. What 
ought a true man to be impressed by ? What is 
there that is worthy of taking hold of our imagina- 
tions and really seeming to us great and wonderful ? 
For men, as I have indicated to you already, are 
judged by their impressibilities; from the child who 
starts and leaps with pleasure when you flash a bit 
of colored glass in the sun before his eyes, all the 
way up to the philosopher who glows with joy as he 
perceives some new relation of idea to idea and so 
discovers a new truth. Find what any man is im- 
pressed by, and you have found what kind of man 
he is. You step into a shopful or earful of men all 
sitting indiscriminately together, and you tell some 
story of how money may be made, you repeat the 
story of some rich man's way of growing rich, and 
almost all will listen and admire. You turn from 
that and repeat some item of the daily news, some- 
thing that only requires common intelligence and a 
general interest in the doings of mankind to under- 
stand and care for, and a smaller number will look 
up and listen. You go on and tell some tale of 
heroism and self-devotion that only a generous heart 
can comprehend, and those in your audience who 
are impressed are fewer still. Finally, you speak 
about the spiritual nature, about the soul's life in 
God, the blessedness of purity, the peace of trust, 
and only one or two or three look up and show with 



154 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

kindling eye and quiet, earnest face that they care 
for those sacred things of which you speak. The 
men are judged and sorted by their impressibilities. 
So nature impresses her own men ; and Art lays her 
hand on hers; and both are judged by their impres- 
sibilities. 

And now it stands out clearly in our story that 
Jesus did not care for the Titanic stones on which 
the Jewish temple rested. It was a superb utterance 
of the skill and strength by which man can control 
the physical world. There they are still to-day, 
those giant stones. The traveller may go and look 
at them. They bear amazing witness of the prow- 
ess of power and patience by which they have been 
wrought out of the mountain-side and piled into their 
places. They tell of man's dominion over matter as 
hardly any ancient sight can tell. They were cry- 
ing out to the disciples of man's power over matter, 
and the disciples were full of wonder at it, but Jesus 
did not care for it. There was a higher, fuller power 
of man, another conquest of the world which these 
men had missed, and, because of their missing that, 
this mere material triumph did not interest or move 
Him. He prophesied how transitory it was all to 
prove, and so passed on and left it. 

Now, we need to know, in the first place, that 
that is always true. It is something which we who 
call ourselves the servants of Jesus Christ have no 
right ever to forget, — that He never is impressed by 
merely material success or power any more than He 
was when He saw them in Jerusalem. You take 
the things for which men praise you, — your success 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 1 55 

in business, the discovery that you have made, the 
house that you have built, — nay, as one proud, ex- 
alted person of this nineteenth century in which we 
live, you take all our material civilization in its 
grandeur and superbness, and you hold it up before 
Christ; and what you need to know is that of and 
for itself Christ does not care for it. It was not 
what He came into the world to bring to pass. It 
is conceivable that all of it might exist to-day, and 
yet Christ's work be a profound and total failure. 
We see, indeed, that all the spring of marvellous 
energy, all the vitalizing power which made our civi- 
lization, has come in connection with the Gospel ; 
and so we are apt to think that what the Gospel set 
itself to do was to give man this power over the 
material world ; but when we undertake to search 
for it we find that not one word ever fell from Jesus' 
lips which told that this was what He sought. If 
material civilization, — that is, the accumulation of 
wealth, the multiplication of physical comforts, the 
conquering of force to man's will so that it leaps 
the ocean almost with a bound and speaks his mes- 
sages around the globe, — if it literally could stop 
short there and go no farther, leave literally no im- 
press upon character, it would make no impression 
upon Christ. He would care nothing for it. 

And what comes next ? Does it not follow that 
if we are Christians, servants of Christ, we too are 
to care nothing for material success in and for itself? 
We yield to it in a servile way. We let it rule us 
and oppress us. In our own lives it keeps us strug- 
gling and working all our days, from our earliest to 



156 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

our latest years, heaping up money or providing 
comforts for ourselves. In our brethren's lives 
around us we yield to its demands, and render our 
homage to the man who overpowers us with the 
bulky imposition of his wealth. If we were really, 
thoroughly, Christians, we could not be such slaves. 
We must rise up in protest and insist that these are 
not the true things for a spiritual being either to 
strive for or to admire. O my dear friends, we 
are not wholly Christ's until some such freedom 
comes to us ! Now and then we see a man who does 
resist and rebel. We see some mortal, made ap- 
parently just like ourselves, who boldly says that he 
will not live for the outside of things, and who with 
perfect satisfaction goes his way through life, disre- 
garding those same things that are to us the lords 
and kings of everything. I think that there is some- 
thing very strange in the mixture of pity and re- 
spect with which we regard such a man. We look 
up to him and we look down on him at once. It is 
the curious utterance of our double consciousness 
about material things, — the superficial consciousness 
which values them supremely, and the deep under- 
consciousness that in themselves they have no 
value. Every sight of such a man stirs in us strange 
questionings, sets us to asking whether the secret of 
his carelessness is an insensibility which is brutal 
and has not come up to the value of these things, or 
a higher sensibility which is Christlike, which has 
gone beyond the care for them and left them behind 
it in its care for better things. 

If we ask this question about the indifference of 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 157 

Jesus, it will not be hard to give it its true answer. 
Indeed, we have only stated a small part of the truth 
when we have said that Christ did not care, does not 
care ever, for merely material triumphs, or for the 
perfection of material things. In a true sense, no 
doubt, He does care for them ; only for Him, with 
His perfect perception, the whole world is only one, 
and it is impossible for Him to do what we are al- 
ways doing, to take the inferior part which is meant 
to work as a means and to give it a value aside from 
its connection with the superior part which is the 
end to which it has to minister. Christ does value 
the material, but always with an outlook beyond it 
to the spiritual. If we keep this in view, I think we 
may believe, with the profoundest reverence, that 
there is no work upon material things faithfully done 
by man which God does not look upon with pleas- 
ure. Thoroughness and beauty are the two excel- 
lent qualities of man's work upon material things. 
Out of the hillside quarry are dug two blocks 
of stone, and one of them with patient labor is set 
into a wall, where for generations it holds a great 
tower in its place. The other is carved into a 
statue, which for centuries stands like a perfect 
flower, shedding the fragrance of its beauty around 
upon the lives of men. Does God have any pleas- 
ure in these two achievements ? I cannot picture to 
myself the God entirely indifferent to them. Every 
being delights in seeing active anywhere the powers 
which embody its own best activity. Now, God is 
the Creator, and if in the creation we can read 
anything of the Creator, these two dispositions, 



158 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

thoroughness and beauty, must lie at the very centre 
of His Being; for they everywhere pervade the world 
that He has made. Thoroughness speaks from the 
lips of every compact adjustment of means to end, 
from every reserve of power which is revealed to us 
as the years go on. Beauty shines out of every 
flower and star and all the manifold variety of life 
that lies between. And when a man builds a strong 
bridge, or paints a glowing picture, when the con- 
structive or the aesthetic power manifests itself in 
man the child, caught by direct inheritance from 
God the Father, the Father does not look on indif- 
ferently, but cares for what His child is doing, and 
proves His care by sending the forces of His crea- 
tion to help the work which the child by his inven- 
tion or his taste is doing. We feel sure of that 
concerning God, and there is no word of Jesus 
which implies the contrary of that. No man can 
read the Gospels and not catch the tone of such a 
sympathy as proves that wherever the eye of Christ 
fell upon any man in Palestine who in those days 
was doing thorough or beautiful work in any de- 
partment of activity, the Man of men honored him 
for it and rejoiced in it. Oh, do not think of Him 
who brought our nature to its best as being totally 
estranged from those things which ninety-nine hun- 
dredths of our race are doing all the time. Think 
of Him as caring for it all, as caring for what they 
did and for what you are doing ; but always as being 
preserved from the slavery of material things by two 
principles which were absolutely despotic and invari- 
able with Him, — the principle that no material thing 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 1 59 

was entirely satisfactory unless it could reveal some 
spiritual usefulness, and the principle that if any 
material thing, however beautiful, hindered any 
spirituality, there should be no hesitation about sac- 
rificing it. Look at those two principles. See if 
they did not both absolutely rule in Christ, and see 
if they are not just what we need to save us from the 
tyranny of material things. 

The first principle was that no material thing was 
wholly satisfactory unless it could reveal some 
spiritual usefulness. That appears everywhere in 
Jesus. It was what lay at the root of His method 
of teaching by parables. No sentimentalist of form 
or color will dare say that he sees a beauty or ten- 
derness in a lily or a sky that Jesus did not see 
there. No botanist will claim that he dissects an in- 
terest out of a flower which was hidden from Him 
who made the flower. And yet these evidently 
were not the things which made the sky or flower 
satisfactory to Jesus. Listen to Him: " The King- 
dom of Heaven is like unto a king that made a mar- 
riage for his son." Then, a king making a marriage 
for his son must be like unto the Kingdom of 
Heaven ; and if the marriage of a prince, then the 
marriage of a peasant, and all the relations of the 
humblest or the highest life. All was like the King- 
dom of Heaven; all shone with spiritual meaning. 
When He had once seen that, how was it possible 
that He should think of them and leave that out, or 
that He should be satisfied with any other man's 
thinking about them which should leave that out ? 

Or take another illustration. I do not doubt that 



l6o THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

Jesus loved the cities where He lived and worked, 
loved Jerusalem and Nazareth, loved their very- 
streets, loved them as we love our Boston. But to 
Him a city was a sacred thing; a multitude of men 
gathered under the conditions most calculated to 
enrich and discipline life. What good they might 
do! How good they might grow! A city was the 
type of heaven to Him. If then he saw His be- 
loved Jerusalem growing rich, but not growing 
good, beautiful, with sparkling palaces and domes, 
as it sat on its strange hilltop, but shining with no 
light of godliness, it was not strange that He was 
disappointed and poured out His whole soul in lam- 
entation that was all the more bitter because she 
who had fallen was so beautiful. And the same 
must have been true of a man. Did Jesus care for 
bustling energy and enterprise ? Indeed He did. 
Life, life was what He was forever calling out for. 
But a man full of energy who fought with every- 
thing except his passions, and desired all good 
things but character, — that sort of man was all the 
sadder to the Saviour for the energy that he pos- 
sessed. Man, to Jesus who had made man, meant 
spirituality; and man without spirituality was to 
Him man without that manhood by which the body 
and the mind and the impetuous will are made truly 
human. 

Now, is it inconceivable that we should come to 
feel about material forces and triumphs just as Jesus 
did? A great commercial man is ruling in our town. 
Men are all singing his praises. His power of mak- 
ing money is immense. His power over other peo- 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL l6l 

pie's destinies is awful. He can stretch out his 
hand and paralyze a village on the other side of the 
continent. Again, he can lift up his voice and bid 
a desert by the Rocky Mountains blossom into a 
city. All men are praising him. Shall you and I 
praise him ? Let us ask ourselves what Jesus would 
say of him. If he is all selfish, not one word of 
praise would fall on him from those blessed lips. 
With a pity that would seal his condemnation, the 
Christ who saw what he might be would cry over 
him, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! " Shall you and I 
praise him then ? Oh, for the grace and clearness to 
say that we will not! Oh, for the spiritual honesty 
which shall refuse to set such a man's life as the 
model life before young men! Oh, for the decency 
which shall refrain from belauding him when he is 
dead for virtues which even he would have blushed 
to have heard mentioned in his presence when he 
was alive! The time must come when Christian 
men shall refuse to honor capitalists for mere 
wealth, or cities for mere size, or their age for its 
mere accumulation of physical comfort. When that 
time comes, when every material triumph is com- 
pelled to show some spiritual gain, some contribu- 
tion to human character, then how much more life 
will mean! 

The other principle that governed our Lord's re- 
lation to the world, I said was this, — that if any 
material thing, however beautiful and perfect in it- 
self, stood in the way of any spirituality, it should 
be sacrificed without a hesitation. We mark every- 
where in the life of Jesus a perfect perception, not 



162 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

merely of the absolute, but of the comparative value 
of things, and so an easy and unquestioning post- 
ponement of the less important to the more impor- 
tant always. This led to a certain distinct character 
being stamped on the career of Jesus, which belonged 
to the special circumstances in which He lived and 
the purpose for which He had come to earth. Under 
these circumstances and with that purpose set be- 
fore Him, He could not possibly do things which it 
was yet in His nature to do, and which it would have 
been His delight to do under other conditions. 

We must guard ourselves against thinking that in 
the few acts which Christ did on the earth, we have 
specimens of all the acts which it was possible for 
Him to do, and so which it would be right for us to 
do. Some people seem to have such an idea, and it 
limits their notion of what it is right for a Christian 
to do very narrowly indeed. This applies very 
clearly to our Lord's whole relation to what we call 
aesthetics, to the beautiful in human art. There is 
not one sign that He was ever touched by it in the 
least; and any child who understands Christ could 
give you the reason. He was too busy ; He was too 
earnest; He was too set on higher things; He was 
here to save men. The sight of their sin, their folly, 
their misery, was before Him every day. Behind 
that glowed to His divine sight the other picture of 
their possibility. He saw what they were; He saw 
what they might be. He was so set on lifting them 
out of what they were and into what they might be 
that He had no time left to think of the beauty or 
the ugliness with which their life chanced to be sur- 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 1 63 

rounded. It was not because He hated art and 
beauty that He never dwelt upon them ; it was that 
He loved righteousness with the intenser love. So 
His indifference was not from a negation, but the 
whole positiveness of His soul was in it. 

And how conceivable this is! How familiar some 
illustrations of the same thing are! The intenser 
and higher wish bids the lower one stand aside and 
bide its time. He who goes into a burning house to 
save a child out of the flames will not stop in the 
rush on which his own life and the child's depends 
to gaze upon the rarest or loveliest pictures that 
hang upon the burning walls. That seems to me to 
tell the story of one side of Christ's indifference to 
the things that occupy our taste and attention. It 
does not prove any absence in Him of the faculties 
in us to which those things appeal. A man who is 
fighting for his life tramples the flowers under his 
feet, but it does not prove that he is a brute who 
cannot see their beauty. A soldier gives up his 
home for the field and camp, but it does not show 
that he is a savage with no family affection. The 
Puritans in their fear of idolatry cast away all art, 
and broke the painted windows and hewed statues 
to pieces; it certainly did not prove with all of them 
that they did not feel the beauty of what they de- 
stroyed. With all strong men this sense of propor- 
tion, which sacrifices the less to the greater, is an 
essential quality. And all strong times in the 
world's history have compelled that same sacrifice 
of the aesthetic to the moral which characterized 
the life of Jesus. Severe and simple in His moral 



164 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

earnestness, nobody misses that which we yet all 
feel, as we compare His life with our own, to be 
absent, — the conscious pleasure in adornment and 
art, the seeking of the tastes for satisfaction. 

How ought this feature in the life of Him whom 
we delight to call our Lord to affect our feeling 
about our own cultivation and gratification of the 
sense of beauty ? Ought we to cast it aside as some- 
thing wrong, and say that we will have no more to 
do with it than He had ? Certainly not ! We ought 
to be sure that, under different conditions from 
those terrible ones in which His Incarnate Life was 
cast, Jesus would have delighted in all true beauty 
that man had ever found or created, with an appre- 
ciation that no man has ever felt. We ought to 
rejoice in the cultivation of all beauty as the fit ex- 
pression of man's joy in that life which the redemp- 
tion of Christ has made so deeply and truly joyous. 
So the Christian has the best right of any man to 
cultivate the aesthetic sense. But at the same time 
he is bound by his Christianity to cultivate it purely, 
and in continual subordination to the moral and 
spiritual needs. The Christian may delight in 
beauty, but he must catch from Christ the assur- 
ance that no beauty is really beautiful which in any 
way hinders righteousness or weakens spiritual life ; 
and he must be ready to strip every beautiful thing 
away the moment that God calls him to intenser life 
and duty. Does not this cast a doubt over the way 
in which many of your houses are adorned ? Does 
it not convict a great deal of the unreal, impure, 
dillettante affectation which calls itself a taste for 



THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 165 

beauty ? Nothing can be more essentially ugly to a 
wise perception than the house crowded with trink- 
ets of exquisite form and color, and inhabited by 
men and women of idle or impure or selfish or little 
lives. The beauty with which they have bedecked 
their bower makes only more unpleasant the lives of 
the insects who inhabit it. 

Here is the simple rehearsal of the whole matter. 
There are four classes, as concerns the whole matter 
of delight in and cultivation of what is artistically 
beautiful. There is the man who is below it all, too 
stupid to feel its influence — -he is the brute. There 
is the man who loves the beautiful, but loves it 
either out of imitation of other people or with his 
senses only, having no spiritual perceptions beyond 
— he is the connoisseur or pedant. There is the man 
who allows himself all joy in material beauty but 
holds it always subordinate to truth and duty — he 
is the Christian. And there is here and there the 
man who is above it all, called to such serious work, 
fighting so fierce a battle, that he has no time left for 
outward beauty, but lives in the unseen beauty of 
devotion. At the head of all such men is Christ. 

These are the two principles, then. He who insists 
on looking through the material to the spiritual 
which lies below it and which it represents and 
educates, he who looks beyond the material to the 
spiritual which is so much more important — he is the 
man whom mere material success and magnificence 
cannot impose upon. Men come to him and say, 
4 'Behold what manner of stones and what buildings 



l66 THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL 

are here!" They say, " See how rich this man 
is!" "How strong this institution is!" ' How 
beautiful this art is! " His answer rings out clear 
and strong: " So far as they all mean spirituality 
and make spiritual men, I do indeed value them 
all and thank God for them ; and yet I value them 
always with a higher value for the things beyond. I 
will let any of them go at any moment, if so I can 
reach to higher spirituality myself, or make other 
men better men." How free that man is! How 
he can walk the proudest streets and not cringe to 
the arrogant wealth which crowds them ! How calm 
the judgment with which, looking at them through 
Christ, he dares to form his own brave, independent 
thoughts of men and things! 

How shall one reach that freedom ? I hope that I 
have made it clear that it is only by entering into 
the higher anxieties of Jesus that one is freed from 
the lower anxieties of men. You must care with all 
your soul that God should be glorified and that men 
should be saved. If you can do that, you are free. 
And you can do that only by letting God first 
glorify Himself in you by saving you. Let Christ 
be your Saviour. Then, tasting His salvation, your 
one great wish will be that all men may be saved, 
and, wishing that, intensely, you will be free from 
every other wish that does not harmonize with that. 
That is St. Paul's great idea when he speaks of the 
Christian as " Casting down imaginations and every 
high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge 
of God, and bringing into captivity every thought 
to the obedience of Christ." 



X. 

THE DOUBLE CAUSE. 

"And his name through faith in his name hath made this man 
strong, whom ye see and know." — Acts iii. 16. 

A lame beggar had sat for years at the gate of 
the Temple in Jerusalem, and all the people knew 
him well. He was part of their city landscape. 
They knew him as they knew the carved columns of 
the Temple doorway. One day Peter and John, two 
disciples of the Christ who had been lately crucified, 
had come that way and cured the beggar's lame- 
ness. The people were full of interest and excite- 
ment, and part of their excitement evidently came 
from the fact that the man who had been cured was 
one whom they all knew so well. The miracle had 
been worked on most familiar material. Not some 
strange, mysterious flesh and bone which might be 
different from their own had been submitted to the 
Healer's power; but this notorious cripple of Jeru- 
salem, this beggar of the Temple, "whom ye see and 
know," — it was his stiff and crooked joints that had 
been loosened and straightened ; it was his feet and 
ankle-bones that had received strength. We can al- 
most see his old companions gathering around him 
and handling him and feeling the power which 

167 



l68 THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

always belongs to the familiar and commonplace 
when it is touched by the mysterious and super- 
natural. 

The mysterious is always thus peculiarly impres- 
sive when it comes in connection with what we 
know most intimately. The moonlight is most 
weird and solemn when it shines into the room 
where every chair and table is well known, or when 
it makes strange the garden in whose well-known 
paths you have walked all day. The great man is 
most impressive and mysterious when he comes into 
your common room and sits among your homely 
furniture. In a somewhat different way this was 
what forced the reality of Christ's wonderful nature 
and works upon the people who had known His 
person since He was a boy. " Ye both know me 
and ye know whence I am," He cried. It was by 
hands that they had touched that the wondrous 
works were done. Out of a face whose every feature 
they knew the strange light shone. 

I want to study with you this afternoon the story 
of the lame man's cure at Jerusalem. And first of 
all let us fill ourselves with this reality which it pos- 
sessed for those who saw it first. The divine power 
which had touched him was all the more unmistak- 
able and all the more wonderful because it had 
shown itself not on some supernal, transcendental 
substance, but on the dull, sordid flesh of this poor, 
well-known beggar. At the same time his sordid 
flesh had shown its inherent sacredness in being 
able to answer to the touch of Christ's apostles. 
So the great works of God's Spirit become real to 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE 169 

us because they touch and change our common 
lives, and our common lives become sacred because 
they can be touched by God's Spirit. 

The cure of the cripple, as St. Peter tells it to 
the people, is the work of a double cause. He says 
that the name of Jesus, that is, of course, the power 
of Jesus, has made the man whole through faith in 
His name, — that is, in His power. This faith may 
be the faith of the disciples who had wrought the 
cure, or of the lame man who had been cured. In 
either case, as you see, the cause is double. There 
is the power of Christ and then there is the condi- 
tion, whether of the disciples or the cripple, which 
gave the power of Christ a chance to work. " His 
name through faith in His name," — these two to- 
gether make the total cause as the result of which 
the rescued beggar is even now making the temple 
ring with his joy as he goes walking and leaping and 
praising God. Neither part of the double cause 
could have been left out, — the exterior force or the 
interior condition, the objective or the subjective, 
the name of the powerful Christ or the faith of the 
obedient cripple. Either of them would have been 
useless without the other. As the result of the two 
together, there stands the cripple cured. 

The philosophy which is involved here is perfectly 
familiar. Its illustrations are constantly occurring. 
Indeed, we may take exactly this formula which St. 
Peter uses and employ its form to describe any one 
of the changes which may take place in the condi- 
tion of a man or of the human race. " His name 
through faith in His name has made this man 



170 THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

whole, " says Peter. How shall I tell the story of 
an ignorant child who by long study has developed 
into wisdom ? Is there not there again the outward 
force made effective through a personal condition, 
until the result is a new quality or nature in the hu- 
man being ? The outward force is truth, all alive 
and seeking for its own expansion. The personal 
condition is study or devoted intelligence, and the 
result is in the educated man. Truth through the 
study of truth hath made this man wise. 

And so all the loveliness of nature, finding its way 
in through man's power of loving nature, creates all 
that delight in nature and absorption of her loveli- 
ness which constitute the artistic life. Beauty 
through man's sense of beauty makes this man fine 
and rich and strong. So a commandment which is 
totally outside of our life, possessing us through our 
obedience to it, makes then a conduct which is 
truly our own. Commandment through obedience 
to commandment makes us just and kind. The 
commandment might thunder from the skies for- 
ever, but, unobeyed by us, it would leave us when 
its thunders ceased just as it found us when they 
began. So a great man set before our admiration 
makes us like himself. A great man through ad- 
miration of his greatness makes us great. 

Everywhere, you see, it is the same. Some power 
outside ourselves unites itself with some disposition 
in ourselves, and so the changes in our natures 
come. I suppose there is no exception to the rule. 
I suppose no change in our natures, in what we 
really are, ever comes by those natures simply work- 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE 171 

ing on themselves, untouched by any outside force. 
Certainly the other statement is true. Certainly no 
outside force can change us until it has made itself 
a confederate in some will or act of our own. It is 
true even of our physical life. The most pestilential 
wind might blow across our faces and no more make 
disease in us than it makes disease in a statue, if it 
did not find in us living men and women some re- 
sponsive possibility which it does not find in the 
dead stone. And the most life-giving gales might 
breathe their freshness on our lips, and make no 
more life in us than they make in the dead corpse, 
if it were not that they met in us the possibility of 
living and gave their strength to us through it. The 
vital forces of the world through our power of liv- 
ing make us live. 

If I might dwell yet for a few moments on the il- 
lustrations of our truth, it is set forth very vividly 
in all the best efforts which men make to help their 
fellow-men. How often the experiment of man to 
help his fellow-man has failed, however earnestly 
and generously made ! Here is the help abundantly, 
on one side, — money, knowledge, sympathy, hope- 
fulness, — all that makes life rich. There, on the 
other side, is need, — a poor, crushed, broken life 
which wants these all. How often the effort to give 
them all has failed! How often help has come like 
the shower from the heavens, and rolled off help- 
lessly from the hard surface of the life on which it 
fell! Charity, simple charity, the mere giving of 
what one has to another man, does not make that 
other man rich. There must be generous taking as 



172 THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

well as generous giving. There must be a sympa- 
thetic soil to receive as well as a sympathetic rain to 
fall. And so our wiser charity is led to anxious 
thought about the character of the men and women 
upon whom benefactions are bestowed — perfectly 
sure that both sides must work together or only the 
most superficial good is done. Sympathy through 
the sympathetic reception of sympathy has made 
this poor man rich, this dreary house warm and full 
of comfort, this coward brave, this weak man strong. 
So only can the story of a complete charity be told. 
But it is time now to have done with illustrations. 
Out of them all our truth stands clear. In every 
one of the instances which I have quoted, two 
things, the outward force and the personal disposi- 
tion or readiness to receive, obey, and use the force, 
unite to bring the final result. The truth which is- 
sues from such an assemblage of instances must be 
the old, ever-new truth of how human nature and 
the world in which it lives belong together and cor- 
respond to one another. One thought of the world 
simply coordinates man with all its ordinary pro- 
ducts. The world has made him as it has made the 
elm-tree and the elephant, and he is no more in it 
than all the rest. Another thought of the world 
makes it and its processes quite insignificant as re- 
gards humanity. He is so totally, so absolutely, its 
superior, so different from it in origin and nature, 
so exclusively the child of God, that he has nothing 
to do with the world except to rule it and to use it. 
It can have no power over him. The thought of 
our verse, the Christian thought, is different from 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE 173 

either. Man and the world belong together. They 
are different in dignity, in origin, in nature. They 
are two and not one, and yet they are two which 
make one; for every result which is ultimately pro- 
duced in man comes from the working of some ex- 
ternal force with and through the cooperating will 
of man. Take man out of the world and you leave 
it full of forces which will find no worthy material to 
work upon. Take the world away from man and 
you leave him with plenty of capacities, but with no 
force to stir them into motion. Put man and the 
world — by which I mean everything outside of the 
personal human life — together, and then you have 
the total cause from which the whole result pro- 
ceeds. Man as the appropriator and applier of 
forces through his human will and nature — that is 
the truth of this verse of St. Peter. 

I said it was the Christian truth. Christ made 
these certain things evident, — I am sure that if you 
think over His teachings and His influence you will 
see how they all certainly came forth from Him. 
He made it evident: (1) That the great purpose of 
everything which was at work in the world was to 
make man a better man, that human character was 
the only worthy result to which all earthly forces 
were directed. (2) That human nature, or charac- 
ter, needs all the forces from outside itself, whether 
they be the forces of the world around it but out- 
side itself, or the sublime forces and influences 
which come direct from God. Human character, 
or nature, cannot perfect itself. (3) That the 
world's forces come to human character only 



174 THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

through the submission of the human will. These 
three things Christ made evident. They constitute 
the soul and heart of His religion. And these three 
truths are in the teaching of Peter, that it is the 
name of Jesus through the faith in Jesus which has 
made the lame man whole. 

Is it not true that such a principle as this really 
points out what ought to be the wide range of 
thought and study for all earnest men ? One man 
says, '■ Study nature and let man alone; science and 
not metaphysics ought to be your task." Another 
man says, f< No, let nature go and study man; sci- 
ence is godless and profane. It is metaphysics 
that gives light. " One theologian concentrates his 
thought on God, and treats man as if he were dead 
material. Another theologian fastens all his 
thought on man, as if in understanding him all prob- 
lems would be solved. But if the soul of man is 
ultimately saved by great, strong forces of the uni- 
verse, — all crowding in through the door of man's 
assent, eager to work upon man's spiritual life, — 
then certainly no region of heaven or earth, no 
truth which it is possible to know of man or God, 
can be left out by him who wishes to be completely 
" wise unto salvation. " It is foolish and weak to 
think of the study of objective fact, or of the inner 
nature of man, as if either of them could take the 
other's place and make it useless; since it is fact 
and power through the human reception of fact and 
power that completes the human life. 

Apply all this to practical religion. How hard it 
seems for many men, for many whole churches and 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE 175 

whole ages, to keep the symmetry and completeness 
of the great spiritual processes by which the world 
is gradually being saved ! What is it to you that 
the Church offers her sacraments, that the Bible lies 
open with its story of Christ, that the Incarnation 
is, indeed, a veritable fact in history — nay, that God 
lives in heaven and in the earth and everywhere ? 
What is all that to you ? Just exactly what it is to 
the chamber that the sunlight is pouring down upon 
the window-pane ; just exactly what it is to the mill- 
wheel that the water is rushing down the flume; 
just exactly what it is to the ship that the wind is 
blowing from the west — everything, if your nature 
and life are ready to receive them. Nothing what- 
ever, if the great powers of the Church and the Bible 
and Christ and God find nothing in you which opens 
to them as they lay their majestic power against 
your life. 

A ship lies close beside a rock here on our coast. 
Some day the west wind blows. It comes fresh 
from the prairies and the mountains, and it is eager 
for the ocean which it loves. It blows on ship and 
rock alike. Why is it that two weeks from now the 
ship is riding in the fragrant sunshine of some Medi- 
terranean bay, while the rock alongside of which it 
lay stands still, bruised and beaten by our cruel seas? 
Two men of you years ago were touched alike by 
God, — why is it that to-day one is rich in the mem- 
ory of years of godliness, years in which he knows 
that he has been trying to do good unselfishly 
to God's children for their Father's sake, and the 
other has nothing but a life of unspiritual selfishness 



176 THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

to remember ? Is the Bible a power ? Some men 
have held that it is, with a completeness which 
has seemed almost to lodge the power in the very 
print and paper of the Book itself. If you were to 
read it, even mechanically, it would save you. If 
you opened it, even at random, it would guide you. 
Are the Sacraments powerful ? Surely they are ; and 
so to a baptism which meant no consecration men 
have brought their children, and to a communion in 
which there was no spirituality men have come 
themselves; and they have gone away from one or 
the other thinking that something really had been 
done. Is the name of Jesus mighty ? Yes, indeed; 
and so men say it like a charm. Is God great and 
awful ? Surely He is; and so men rattle profanely 
through unmeaning and half-articulated oaths. In 
every case the blunder is the same. It is giving to 
the half the power and virtue which belong only to 
the whole. The Bible believed in and obeyed — 
that is, the Bible plus belief and obedience — that is 
power. God loved and honored — that is, the name 
of God surrounded with the reverence and the affec- 
tion of the devoted soul, — that is strength for re- 
straint and inspiration. The west wind plus the 
ship's nature makes the power of the voyage. The 
ground's richness plus the seed's fertility — that, no 
less than that — makes the tree ! 

We all remember how, in the first chapters of 
Genesis, all the beasts are brought to Adam to 
know what he would call them. They went out 
from him by and by, bearing names which he had 
given them. Not till their lives had touched his 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE 1 77 

life were they complete and ready for their full 
careers. It always seems to me as if there could be 
no test more sure of what kind of a man that first 
man was than we should get if we could see into 
his heart as he stands there in the Garden, and know 
whether that submission of all the creatures made 
him proud or humble. Did it make him proud ? 
Did he see them depart after his naming of them, 
saying over to himself, " Behold, they are all mine 
and all this world exists for me!" If so, he was 
but a poor creature, and all the misery which has 
come since in his race might have been prophesied. 
But did it make him humble ? As he saw them go, 
did he become aware of what a great and awful 
thing it was to be the centre of so much life, and feel 
his terrible unfitness for it, and cry out for strength? 
If so, then he was strong, and all the good strength 
which manhood has displayed since then was there 
in its germ in that humility. Always men's qualities 
are shown by whether their powers and privileges 
make them proud or make them humble. 

So you must all be judged — if you believe what 
I am preaching to you this afternoon — by the im- 
pression which it makes upon your soul. I have 
dared to tell the young man here that the Bible, the 
Church, the ever-pleading Christ, nay, God Him- 
self, wait for his call before, with all their power, they 
can save his soul. He can say, " Go," or " Come." 
It is an awful power. Does it make him who pos- 
sesses it bold or humble ? If it makes him proud, 
it shows how weak he is. If it makes him humble, 
if the sense of what a Guest it is who stands at his 



178 THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

door, unwilling — nay, in some true sense, unable — - 
to enter until he shall bid the bolt fly back, — if all 
this makes him cry out with fear at himself lest he 
should be unfit for such responsibility ; if, seeing the 
full depth of meaning in the words which tell that 
only to the " pure in heart " can come the real bless- 
edness of knowing God, he feels how powerless he 
is to keep his own heart pure and cries out to God 
Himself to do it, — " * Make me a clean heart, O 
God ! ' O God, who wilt not enter into me unless I 
am such that I can receive Thee, oh, make me such 
that I can receive Thy life!" — if such humility as 
that possesses him, then how great he is, and what 
a great life opens before him ! Oh, how true it is 
that the completest humility of man has always 
come, must always come, by man's knowing the 
greatness of his nature and his privileges ! 

Another value of the truth I have been preach- 
ing lies in the great hope which it unfolds to the 
imagination of the soul that holds it. If there were 
needed no cooperation of the consenting soul to 
the power of Christ, then Christ must have done 
long ago the work which He proposed to do for 
man. No obstacle existing, He must have pressed 
on at once to the entire fulfilment of His love. He 
would not have delayed. And then — why, then, it 
must be that this which we see now in ourselves and 
in the world is all. There would remain no hope 
of more beyond. Can we think that without a sad 
sinking of the heart ? What, is this all ? This half- 
way life — this mixture of the baser with the better 
way in everything — this selfishness, this sluggish- 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE 179 

ness, this sensuality, this wearisome yielding to 
temptation only to repent and struggle upward for 
a moment and then fall again — is this all ? Has 
Christ done His work in us ? 

But if the other thought is true, if Christ's work 
is not done in us, but only just begun; and if it 
lingers not because He is reluctant, but because, 
needing our cooperation, it can be done only so 
fast and so far as we receive it and allow it, — then, 
with all our humiliation there certainly comes hope. 
All the unknown things which Christ will do for us 
so soon as we are ready; all the great revelations 
which He has to make to us so soon as we can see 
them, — all these lie open wide before us. To him 
who thoroughly believes this truth it seems as if a 
voice were ever crying in those words which Jesus 
spoke so often to the crowds in Palestine, " He that 
hath ears to hear, let him hear." Perhaps no ear 
does hear the special message; perhaps no intelli- 
gence is yet fine and pure and clear enough to take 
the truth which yet some day the whole world shall 
know. But the cry has hope in all the humiliation 
that it brings. Agnosticism says, ' ' We do not know, 
and because we do not know we must give up the 
hope of ever knowing." Our truth says, " We do 
not know, but the hindrance in us is not essential 
and perpetual. It is incidental and may be tem- 
porary. Let us be better and humbler and more un- 
selfish and more spiritual, and we shall see." And so 
our very ignorance becomes the power of a better life. 

And certainly our truth gives very interesting 
value to the daily incidents and little things of life. 



l8o THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

If there is really waiting, behind the door of our re- 
luctance and incompetency, a vast, deep wealth of 
blessing, of character, of knowledge, which might 
be ours if only there were broken down this wall of 
hindrance between us and it, then how important 
and significant everything must be which shakes 
that wall of hindrance and tends at all to its dis- 
lodgment. Every least incident of life may have 
this value. Every largest incident of life is really 
insignificant unless it has this value in some degree. 
The change from wealth to poverty or from poverty 
to wealth, from sickness to health or from health to 
sickness, the forming or the breaking of a friend- 
ship, the undertaking or the finishing of a task, — all 
of these are no more than the mere changes of the 
wind unless somehow they give occasion to such 
changes in our dispositions that some of the great 
abundance of truth and goodness, some of the great 
abundance of God which is waiting outside our 
lives, can enter in. 

This touches the work that we try to do for our 
fellow-men, and often redeems its superficialness 
and insignificance. Often it must seem as if the 
mere exertion to make your child or your neighbor 
more comfortable were a very little thing. It is 
worth doing, for comfort is better than discomfort, 
and the affection which you show is well worth tes- 
tifying. But if it can be more than that, — if, by the 
kind act, and still more by the echo which your act 
brings of the Divine goodness, you can open the life 
of your neighbor or your child to some inflow of the 
great goodness and truth which is all ready to invade 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE l8l 

it, — then surely it is more than worth the doing; 
it is worth the sacrifice of one's own will and pleas- 
ure, it is worth the consecration of one's life to do! 

Little, sometimes, must it seem to the devoted 
worker for the poor merely to improve the dwelling 
where the poor man lives, — to win, perhaps, and 
perhaps not to win, his gratitude because his win- 
dows catch a brighter sunshine and his rooms are 
open to a healthier air, — little to build the gallery 
and open it freely to all who will come and gaze, 
however ignorantly, on its pictures, — little to shut 
a drinking shop here and there and save one 
wretched family from blows and starvation, — little 
any of these things must seem sometimes in them- 
selves, but if they stand any chance of opening the 
wretched, poverty-hardened life to visions and com- 
panionships, to knowledge of God, to perceptions, 
however dim at first, of the divine influences which 
the soul of man was made to feel, — then surely 
they carry their own inspiration with them, and it 
is no wonder that the choicest men and women 
will so freely give their time, their thought, 
their sympathy, and their means to works like these. 

St. Paul's sublimest, most pathetic picture is 
perhaps that in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to 
the Romans, in which he talks about the whole cre- 
ation groaning and travailing in pain together until 
now, waiting for the adoption, the redemption, of 
our body. Think what that means ! The world cen- 
tres in and depends on man. It is what he makes it. 
And man is capable of being possessed by God, 
filled with His Spirit, echoing His character. Only 



182 THE DOUBLE CAUSE 

the hindrance of man's own unwillingness and in- 
completeness delays God's occupation of his life. 
Behold, then, the whole creation stands by and 
waits! Its perfectness depends on man's. When 
will he let God do for him all that God wants to do, 
and so become the worthy centre of a new life for 
all the world? The whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth. The very hills and trees cry out in discon- 
tent; the very beasts are eager and impatient, want- 
ing a nobler master, a master who shall more realize 
himself and his own capacity of being filled with God. 
Am I talking too large ? Am I bidding you to 
listen to a voice of creation which is too diffused 
and vague for you to hear. Then hear your own 
creation ; hear the little circle of life by which you 
are immediately surrounded. Let your family, your 
shop, your school, your farm, your house, your 
garden, cry out to you in remonstrance against 
everything low and sensual and ungodlike in the life 
you live. Let them tell you how much finer and 
loftier they would become if you were all that you 
might be. It is not for yourself alone, — that were 
too selfish,— your whole creation groaneth and tra- 
vaileth, waiting for your adoption, waiting for you 
to begin to live, and to go on and live completely 
the life of a child of God. 

May I ask you to remember the course by which 
our thoughts have been travelling this afternoon ? 
We saw the universal necessity that for any true 
change in man there must be a double cause. His 
own disposition must work with the force external 



THE DOUBLE CAUSE 1 83 

to himself, which sought to change him. We saw 
how even Christ owned this necessity, and allowed 
His disciple to declare that it was only through faith 
in His name that His all-saving name could save the 
world. Then we saw in what profoundly interesting 
and critical position this put man, standing, with 
his power of believing or of disbelieving, between 
God and God's truth and God's blessing on the one 
side, and his own life and the world's life — so empty 
in themselves, so gloriously full when they are filled 
with God — upon the other. 

Only one word more needs to be said. That 
name which is nothing to us unless we believe in it, 
has its own blessed power to tempt our belief. 
Thank God! — His mercy does not stand afar off 
waiting for us to take it. It presses itself upon us. 
The Guest whose coming-in is salvation not merely 
stands at the door, but knocks. All that is true 
and need not, must not, be forgotten. And yet still 
— still, here we stand, each with the last responsi- 
bility of his own life. 

Who would be rid of that responsibility ? Who 
would not humbly, earnestly claim — after God has 
done all that God can do — after Christ with all His 
wondrous love and patience and suffering has made 
His approaches to the soul, and waits and listens 
for the soul's reception — who would not claim then 
the soul's own right and duty itself to open wide 
the door, and say to the waiting Saviour and Mas- 
ter, " Even so, come, Lord Jesus!" and hear the 
certain answer, " Lo, I come!" 



XL 
GO INTO THE CITY. 

"Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou 
must do." — Acts ix. 6. 

It was the critical day of St. Paul's life. The 
miracle which made him a servant of Christ was just 
complete. He had been thrown down from his 
horse by the splendor that outshone the noonday, 
and in answer to the voice that proclaimed Who it 
was that thus had arrested him, he had just asked 
the humble question, " What wilt thou have me to 
do ? " The stunned senses had recovered them- 
selves; and Paul, the man who always had a purpose 
and a destination, was asking for the destination and 
purpose of the new life which he felt had begun. 
The promptitude of all Paul's thought and action 
in his conversion was remarkable. His direct, 
straightforward mind laid hold immediately of the 
new conditions. We stop to play about our great 
experiences. We coax them and watch over them ; 
we hesitate and analyze. But Paul went directly 
to the point. " I am a new man. Now what shall 
I do with my new life." The fact once there it is 
not something to be mused and pondered over, but 
to be used. And God replies, " Arise, and go into 

184 



GO INTO THE CITY 185 

the city, and it shall be told thee what thou shalt 
do." 

The city was Damascus. Paul was just within 
sight of its shining walls. It was the city for 
which he had set out three days ago. He was on 
his way thither, when the miracle arrested him, go- 
ing to seize the disciples of Jesus wherever he could 
find them. And now God says: " Still go into the 
city where you meant to go. Your route shall not 
be altered. Your new life must walk over the same 
road where the old life was walking. Still go into 
the city, and there it shall be told thee what thou 
must do." And so Paul started out on the old road 
again, a new man ; and, with another spirit from that 
which he had expected, passed through the gate of 
Damascus, for which through all the hours of the 
long forenoon his eyes had been impatiently search- 
ing in the distance. 

A new spirit always seems to demand new circum- 
stances. It is one of the profoundest instincts of 
our nature. There seems to you to be something 
wrong when you go out full of some great experi- 
ence which has changed all your inner life, and find 
all your outer life the same that it was yesterday. 
You could not help fancying that it must have al- 
tered, too, and there seems to be something almost 
insulting in its unchanged persistency. You carry 
out with you a new love, a great joy, a terrible sor- 
row, and can it be that this new stream, so overfull, 
must flow between the same old banks wherein the 
life, hitherto so meagre, was content to run ! Can 
it be that with this other heart you must still meet 



1 86 GO INTO THE CITY 

men as you met them yesterday, talk with them of 
the same old things, still do the same business in 
the same shop, or, with the joy or sorrow burdening 
your heart, take up the tools of household drudgery 
and run the family life just as you did before the joy 
or sorrow came ! Sometimes it even seems as if the 
permanence of nature were an insult. When we are 
absorbed in our own pain or pleasure, the hills and 
stars seem to mock us with their indifference. The 
poet cries out, petulantly, " How can ye chaunt, ye 
little birds, and I so weary, full of care!" We find 
that nature and life will not honor any such demand 
of ours, and we know that it is best that they should 
not, but it is natural for us to ask it. It is a sort of 
witness of our sense of the supremacy that properly 
belongs to spirit over circumstances. Spirit is the 
king, and circumstances only ought to be the robe 
he wears, suiting themselves to his figure and chan- 
ging with his changes. We believe that some day 
this will come. In the new heavens and new earth 
wherein righteousness is to dwell, circumstances will 
suit themselves, freely and fluently, to the condi- 
tions of the spiritual life. They will be to the stiffer 
and grosser circumstances of this earth what Paul's 
" spiritual body " is to the " natural body " of which 
he tells the Corinthians. But now we come to see 
that only by long, slow changes and in most general 
ways do circumstances adapt themselves to spirit ; 
and we learn to understand that spirit must triumph 
over circumstances, not by casting them away and 
making new ones, but by overpowering them as they 
are, compelling forth their richer capacities and 



GO INTO THE CITY 1 87 

making them serve greater ends than they have 
dreamed of. When the artistic spirit has filled us, 
we may not fling the carpenter's chisel aside — we 
must work with it still and make it carve our 
statue. 

Of all the new spirits that thus enter into human 
life and take possession of it, the strongest and most 
positive beyond all comparison is Christianity. 
There is nothing which can happen to a man's inner 
life which can be so much to that life as for the man 
to become a Christian, for him to find and own the 
Saviourship and Mastership of the Lord jesus Christ. 
His gentle dominion occupies a nature, and what 
then ? One of the common phenomena of Christian 
experiences is this — that the new Christian, sensible 
of such a new life within him, looks for and expects 
a new life outside himself, and is surprised (if he is 
not almost disappointed) when he discovers that this 
new experience, so wonderful and inspiring, settles 
into the midst of old familiar circumstances. This 
is the feeling that has always broken out in the dis- 
position to make a special and technical religious 
life. The world, with all its intercourses, seems too 
worldly. Its musics jar upon the new, exalted 
soul. Its sights seem sordid to eyes quickened by 
gazing into the near face of God. Let us open the 
gates and go away. Let us carry our new life into 
a new world. Let us go where the eyes and ears 
shall see and hear nothing but their own sacred 
sights and sounds. Who has not felt the impulse ? 
And everywhere we see it taking shape. The de- 
vout Romanist covets and seeks his monastery, and 



1 88 GO INTO THE CITY 

so leaves the world. The devout Protestant with- 
draws into the little circle of the religious public 
and devotes his life to certain technical religious 
practices, and avoids the world's people among 
whom he used to live. 

But God will not allow that impulse to find per- 
fect satisfaction. He is always forcing the new re- 
ligious life into contact with the world. The new 
man must still mix with the old men, and touch 
them closely in all the pressures of our ever-shifting 
life. The circumstances will not be entirely altered 
with the alteration of the spirit. With everything 
that is inherently wicked in the old occupation once 
thoroughly cast away, the soul then finds that it is 
to keep the rest and grow, not out of them, but in 
them, and enlarge them as it grows, and make them 
fit for the new work they have to do in ministering 
to an ever-enlarging soul. 

Thus it is with the converted merchant. The 
mercantile life may be very large or very little. You 
know both kinds of it. It grows with the growing 
of a merchant's soul. The young man, struggling 
just for his own ambition and advancement, makes 
one thing out of business; and that same man, 
when his life is enlarged by the dependency of 
others, when he has his home with wife and children 
to provide for, finds the capacity of business to be 
something much larger. It can put on new sacred- 
ness when it is consecrated to such sacred needs. 
And let that same man be a Christian. Let the 
needs of his own nature and the claims of charity 
grow real to him, and then again the business life 



GO INTO THE CITY 1 89 

opens its new capacity, and lo! it can become so 
holy that the spiritual life may eat of it as of a sac- 
rament, and charity may strike the richest water out 
of its rugged rocks. You may take the same truth 
and see how it is true of your own occupation, 
whatever it may be. Every occupation lifts itself 
with the enlarging life of him who practises it. The 
occupation that will not do that no man really has a 
right to occupy himself about. It is bad even for 
his smaller life if it is not capable of enlarging itself 
to contain his life as it grows larger. 

There is, no doubt, a prevalent and very danger- 
ous conception of the separateness of the religious 
life. Does it seem strange to say that ? Can the re- 
ligious life be too separate from the world ? you ask. 
And the answer is easy. Certainly not in spirit. To 
come out and to be separate from every worldliness 
is the absolute duty of the Christian's life ; and this 
separateness of spirit will of itself dictate and create 
certain marked separations of external life. Let all 
Christians once be really devout in heart, and soon 
enough and clear enough we shall see the marks in 
their external life, dividing them from the people 
who care nothing for what is to them supremely 
dear. But it is very dangerous to begin at the other 
end. It is very dangerous to begin by looking for 
external differences to denote the Christian life. It 
may do very great harm if we start by feeling that 
the sign by which we shall know that a man has be- 
come a Christian will be a change of the occupations 
in which we have always seen him engaged, I want 
to point out several of these dangers which come, as 



I go GO INTO THE CITY 

it seems to me, from all attempts to make anything 
like a conventional type of external religious life 
separate from the healthy life into which the natural 
dispositions of men lead them to enter. 

I. In the first place it is bad for the world. It 
throws a mystery and unreality about the whole idea 
of religion, which keeps people from entering into 
it, or feeling that it belongs to them. One often 
wonders, as, after some week-day service, he goes out 
into the streets and finds them thronged with men 
full of life and intent upon their work, or as he lays 
down in his study some book of religious specula- 
tion and goes out into the eager and interested 
world, what it is really that these people think, 
when they give it a moment's thought at all, of this 
religion in which his whole life is bound up, of the 
Church with all her offices and exhortations. There is 
a great deal which makes him think that the greater 
number of these men and women have come to re- 
gard the Church and her religion as something apart 
from and almost inconsistent with the daily duties 
and daily life in which they find themselves engaged. 
The Christian acts to which they hear religious peo- 
ple urged are acts wholly apart from their ordinary 
work. The Christian people whom they hear most 
praised are those whose time is most occupied in 
certain technical religious tasks. It is not strange 
that they should come to think that there are two 
worlds, namely, — one irreligious, the world of busi- 
ness and of social life, the world where homes are 
bright and warm, where stores are busy and active 
along the crowded streets; and the other a religious 



GO INTO THE CITY 191 

world, where the churches are, where the church- 
goers go, where psalms are sung, where life is dim 
and more subdued, where charity and almsgiving are 
the work of men and women different from them- 
selves; and to think, too, that he who, from being 
an irreligious man, becomes a religious man, passes 
over from one of these worlds into the other, gives 
up the old and takes the new, so that they are sur- 
prised if afterward they meet him where they used 
to see him, where the glow of social joy is bright 
and ruddy, or where the clatter of tumultuous trade 
is loud. Many men's ideas about religion are all 
colored with this sort of strangeness. It is to pack 
up everything and move away. It is to cut adrift 
from all that makes life dear and real, and go out 
into a world that is really dim, however bright it 
may be painted. 

Suppose that you could get the true idea into 
those men, — would it not make a difference ? Sup- 
pose that you could make them see that the newness 
of the new life must be not in new circumstances, 
but in a new spirit. As I read really thoughtful 
men, I see them discontented not so much with the 
things that they are doing as with the way in which 
they are doing them. They feel that the things are 
really worth doing, if only they could be done up to 
the full measure of their capacity. The scholar be- 
lieves more and more in the nobility of Learning, 
but grows very discontented with the miserable, 
superficial way in which he just skims the surface of 
her treasures. The thoughtful trader believes that 
Trade in its ideal is generous and beautiful. It is 



I92 GO INTO THE CITY 

the reality that he makes of it by the way in which 
he does it that seems to him sordid. What shall 
Religion say ? If she says, " Come away from those 
things. Take away your interest in your books, 
your interest in your store, and give them to some- 
thing else," they may not scoff, they may not be 
contemptuous, but they are puzzled and lost. You 
offer them a world they cannot comprehend. It is 
all unreal. Can you not say — is it not all right to 
say: " This is the very thing religion has to do for 
you, to make your books and your store, your study- 
ing and money-getting, attain their full ideal, to fill 
them out to their complete capacity, to take their 
sordidness out of them and fill them with their true 
spirit. It is with you in your occupation that re- 
ligion has to do, to make you in the highest sense a 
scholar, a trader worthy of the name." 

Tell me, would not such an appeal of religion, 
made genuinely, made not for the sake of catching 
men, but genuinely, — would it not give reality to 
what is to men now so terribly unreal ? If we could 
go to a man and say, " Come, love God and fear 
Him. Be penitent, be obedient " ; and when he 
said, " What for ?" if we would only answer — not 
" So that you may be something new and wholly 
different from what you are " (he shakes his head 
and is all puzzled when you say that) — but, " So 
that you may be perfectly what you are now so 
wretchedly — a true father, a true citizen, a true 
man"; — then we should start a real ambition; and 
then, perhaps, by and by, having mounted up to the 
higher levels of these characters, he would be ready 



GO INTO THE CITY I93 

for the revelation of some higher things to be. 
Having been thoroughly a man by his religion here, 
he should be able to become a saint of some untried 
quality in some future life. I think of the great 
Hebrew people. There never was a people to whom 
religion was so real, and, also, there never was a 
people to whom religion was so little an art y and 
therefore mixed itself with all their life, flowed freely 
into all the structure of their state, and ran through 
all the family existence, and found natural embodi- 
ment in the slightest and most prosaic acts. 

2. It is bad for the outsider, then, for religion to 
be a technicality, and to seem to belong only to cer- 
tain actions. But it is no less bad for the religious 
man himself. Here is a Christian man who has 
been taught to think that Christian life consists in 
doing certain special things, not in doing all things 
in a certain spirit. He is a Christian when he goes 
to church. He is not a Christian when he lives 
among his friends in common intercourse. But a 
large proportion of his life must be spent in just such 
intercourse. The special religious actions can take 
up only a little part of every day. And what is the 
result ? Why, that the larger part of every day is 
counted out of the Christian's Christian life. 

Do I seem to make a merely theoretical difficulty ? 
Ask yourself, I beg you. My Christian friend, is 
it not so ? Do you not often live along, with the 
great part of your life just the same as it would be 
if you had never taken Jesus for your Master, with 
a few moments or an hour every day standing out 
apart in which you are different from what you 



194 GO INTO THE CITY 

would have been unconverted, because then you are 
at your public worship or your private prayers ? 
And if some one should question you about it you 
would say: " I cannot be at worship all the time; I 
must earn my bread," — as if being at worship were 
religious and earning one's bread necessarily were 
not! 

Some one not long ago characterized " modern 
Christianity" as a "civilized heathenism"; and 
the phrase took, and people repeated it to one an- 
other. What the phrase means seems to be simply 
this : that here we are, eighteen hundred years after 
Christ, still living the same life that the heathen 
lived before Christ came — the same external life. 
The Church has not broken from the world. Men 
are not anchorites and hermits. They are still 
fathers of families, heads of households, doers of 
business, masters or servants, rich or poor. And 
these they always will be. Christianity never meant 
and never tried to break those first instincts which 
go out inevitably into those fundamental institutions 
which are older than the Gospel, because they are 
older than the sin that made the Gospel. But if the 
power of Christ, in all these years, has entered into 
these eternal relations and filled out at all their 
shrunk and meagre forms, if fathers are more fa- 
therly, and citizens come nearer to the true ideal of 
citizenship, and masters are more full of mercy, and 
servants are more full of faithfulness than in the 
days before the Great Light shone, then the real 
change has come, however imperfectly, however far 
yet from what it ought to be. And our modern life 



GO INTO THE CITY I95 

is not a " civilized heathenism/ ' but is coming 
nearer to what some day it is to be, — a Christianized 
humanity; a world-wide expression of that of which 
the Incarnation of Christ was the first great utter- 
ance — the dwelling of God in man, of the Divine 
Spirit in human circumstances, in human flesh. 

Is it not good for us to learn that not on any 
sacred ground where God first speaks to us, nor on 
ground like that, sacred, serene, apart, unworldly, is 
where our Christian lives are to be lived ? M Arise, 
and go into the city, and it shall be told thee there 
what thou must do." Where men are thickest, and 
these duties which come of men's relationships to 
one another grow most complicated and multitudi- 
nous, where experiences grow most plentifully in 
the hard-paved, much-trodden street, — there is the 
place for the Christian to feed and use his Christi- 
anity. 

Oh, how one comes to love the city ! With all its 
wickedness and misery, it is the home of life. With 
all its artificialness and deafening roar, with all its 
selfishness and meanness and brutality, how a man 
comes year after year to love the great city more 
and more, because here are men — men with their 
ever-crowding life making duties and chances for 
each other as the ever-crowding and unresting sea 
throws up its sparkles into the sunlight and its 
white crests of foam. It is a joy and privilege to 
live in a great city, — only the city Christian, above 
all others, needs to know that his Religion must not 
submit to be shut in to technicalities, but must in- 
sist on claiming all his life for her own ; otherwise, 



I96 GO INTO THE CITY 

so crowding is this world about him, if she consents 
to share at all, she will be cheated terribly and put 
off with very little. Her only assurance of getting 
anything is to claim the whole. 

3. There is one way of talking about our Church 
activities which is far too narrow, and may do a 
good deal of harm. There is much talk nowa- 
days about " Church-work/ ' The development of 
Church schools and charities is manifold. The zeal 
of the good people who carry them on is excellent 
to see, — we wish that there were more of them of 
the best kind. But the danger, I sometimes think, 
is that the great number of a congregation such as 
this, for whom it is impossible for various reasons 
that they should be personally engaged in these 
works of the parish, should think that therefore 
there is no Church-work for them. Church-work 
has become a sort of technicality. Church-workers 
have become a sort of caste. The true Church-work 
is wider — wide as the whole activity which the 
Church inspires. Wherever any man of this con- 
gregation is doing anything honest or merciful out 
of any impulse that he has gathered here, he is 
about Church-work. Whenever any woman puts 
the spirit of the Sunday collect or the week-day 
meeting into her household, and does her little to 
purify and Christianize society, she is a Church- 
worker. 

The Church of God we make so narrow ! Some 
limit it by lines of ordination and some limit it by 
stone walls, but where does Christ see it ? Wherever 
any of His baptized children are doing any of His 



GO INTO THE CITY 197 

work. You think that you can be of no service in 
the Church. Perhaps you are sorry for it and feel 
almost ashamed of it. But certainly you can, even 
the children of you. There is none too young and 
none too weak. Take any word that we have said 
or sung to-day, and carry it with you like the bread 
of life to some hungry heart this week; take the 
Christ who has manifested Himself to you to-day, 
and in His power do some helpful thing for some 
of His brothers or sisters to-morrow, and that is 
Church-work. The Church grows by it and Christ 
delights in it; and some day He will own it with 
these words which are the crown of all the prizes of 
the universe: " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done 
it unto me," The Church of God in its complete 
perfection at the last will be the City of God, — so 
says the Bible always, and there is meaning in the 
figure, — the manifoldness of life all uttering the in- 
dwelling God in the city which is the Church. 

Let me take time to say one last word about what 
we must have before the partial and technical Chris- 
tian life which we live now can pass into the full 
and universal life which I have tried to describe. 

We must have, first, a deeper meditativeness in 
what we do. Our life so learns to lack the habit, 
that we almost fear lest it should come to lack the 
power of meditation. There is so little rest! There 
is such an unreasoning passion for activity ! And 
so we skim the surface of all things ; we never look 
down into their depths and see the power of help 
and culture which they might contain. We know 



198 GO INTO THE CITY 

no more of the real depth of our own lives than a 
child who crosses a frozen lake knows how deep the 
lake is. He does not even know that it has a depth. 
It seems all surface. But before our life can get 
depth into it, it must get God into it. God is the 
only power that deepens lives. A life with no in- 
tention of God in it must be shallow. And there is 
no life so hard and crusted that, if God does enter 
into it, He will not break its crust through and 
deepen it to untold richness. 

But the only way that brings God into our lives 
is first to have Him in our hearts. The soul that 
has Him finds Him. " To him that hath shall be 
given." The new man takes the old circumstances, 
and, bringing God into them, makes of them the 
new life. 

Arise, then, and go into the city. It is a word for 
each new Sunday which makes as it were for us a 
new beginning of our lives, — Arise and go into the 
city. You will find it the old city with the old 
streets and houses. You will find the new weeks 
what the old weeks were in all their outward cir- 
cumstances. But they need not be the same old 
hopeless, meagre, thriftless things that other weeks 
have been. If you will only carry into them a new 
light, they will be new. If you will only take 
some new resolution, some bolder faith, best of all, 
— nay, only good of all, — if you will take Christ into 
them, how new and ever-renewing they will be — the 
beginning of the new heavens and new earth for 
you, fresh already with the everlasting freshness of 
eternity. 



XII. 
THE HOLINESS OF DUTY. 

"Wherefore the law is holy." — Romans vii. 12. 

St. Paul, in writing to the Jews and urging on 
them the Revelation of Jesus, encountered a ques- 
tion which is universal, but which came into special 
prominence among them. It was the question of 
the relation which the Law of God holds to His im- 
mediate personal presence and communion. The 
Jews had been drilled for years to obey the Law 
which God had given to them by the hands of 
Moses. Now Christ had come and said: " I mani- 
fest to you the God who gave the Law. Look at me 
and see, not His will only, see Him Himself, — His 
qualities, His holiness, His tenderness, His love." 
It was a higher life of personal communion which 
He offered, far above the life of obedience in which 
they had been living. 

And at once Christ's coming made two classes 
among the Jews. Some of them rejected Him and 
some accepted Him. Those who rejected Him 
said: " We do not need Him. Moses is enough. 
There can be none greater than Moses. We do not 
desire any such spiritual life as He offers. Let us 
do our duty. Let us keep the Law and all is well. " 

199 



20O THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

Of this class were the better and earnest portion of 
the Pharisees. On the other hand, among those 
who accepted Christ, there were some who said: 
" Now Moses is obsolete. A mere servile obedience 
to law is not for those who have come into personal 
knowledge of God through His Son. We are the 
saints. We are above the Law." There are various 
indications of such a perversion of the spiritual na- 
ture of Christianity, precisely the same that came, at 
the spiritual revival of the Reformation, among the 
Anabaptists of the continent and of England. These 
were the two classes. One class held the Law of 
Moses to be absolute and final, and thought that 
obedience to its minute details constituted all of re- 
ligion. The other class believed that obedience was 
a mere slavery when one had been admitted to the 
loftiest spiritual experiences. Against both of 
these classes St. Paul stands up with his simple as- 
sertion of the holiness of the Law. "The Law is 
holy," he declares. To the first class he says: 
" Obedience to Moses has a spiritual meaning, and 
if you would allow it, it would lead you on 
to Christ/ ' To the second class he says: " No 
perception of and sympathy with Jesus can free 
you from the fundamental necessity of keeping 
God's Law. The Law and the Gospel belong to- 
gether. Not merely the Gospel, but the Law, 
is holy." Borrowing his figure from the sight that 
they all saw in the streets each day, the slave 
leading a little boy to the teacher's house, he said, 
" The Law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto 
Christ.' ' 



THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 201 

Times have all changed, but man is still the same ; 
and this difference which St. Paul found lies so deep 
in human nature that there are the same two classes 
still. There are men of the Law and men of the 
Gospel still ; that is, there are men whose pervading 
thought is duty, the doing of what they think they 
ought to do; and there are other men whose per- 
vading thought is piety, the affectionate and 
spiritual relation of man to God. We know them 
both. The first man never speaks of anything like 
the Love of God, never talks about holiness, never 
struggles for spiritual experience, but he is always 
looking for what is right and doing it. The other 
man dwells much on the soul's life, loves God, and 
knows that God loves him, prays, reaches out after 
divine communion. And each of them is liable to 
the narrowness of his own kind. One of them 
makes nothing of spiritual experience, and says: 
" To do his duty — that is what a man is for. Let 
him do that, lovingly or unlovingly, believingly or 
unbelievingly, and there is the limit of his nature/' 
The other always tends to count duty as low and 
says: "Commune with God. Be right at heart. 
The outward act is of small moment." This man 
calls the first man " moralist " ; and the first answers 
back by calling him " pietist." It is the oldest 
among ail the differences between earnest men. It 
has its origin in deep differences of character. And 
it calls for a constant assertion about all duty of 
what St. Paul asserted about the Law of Moses — 
that duty leads to piety and that no piety is true 
which has not the vigor of duty in it. The holiness 



202 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

of duty is a deep truth which both the moralist 
and the pietist need to know. 

I want to speak about that truth to-day. I want 
to preach of duty in its relation to religion. I think 
there are a great many of you who are trying to do 
your duty, who almost anxiously disown having 
anything to do with religion. I want to show you, 
if I can, that the two cannot be separated. 

There are, then, three possible powers by which 
the action of mankind is governed. They are the 
Law of Nature, the Perception of Right, and the 
Love of God. Government by the first power we 
call Impulse, by the second, Duty, by the third, 
Religion. And each of these has its tendencies 
towards the fuller government that follows it. Im- 
pulse, proving its insufficiency, gives way to Duty ; 
and Duty, likewise finding the limit of its power, 
passes into Religion. Either of the first two that 
refuses to lead on to its successor, and counts itself 
the final, perfect government of man, fails and be- 
comes corrupt. If we insist on living by nothing 
but Impulse, Impulse immediately loses its sacred- 
ness and becomes passion and waywardness ; if we 
will own nothing higher than the power of Duty, 
which is conscience, conscience itself fails us, either 
by growing weak and indulgent, or by growing so 
hard and rigid that the passions rebel against it and 
there is terrible anarchy within. The first growth, 
the growth of Impulse into Duty, is told in that lofty 
poem of Wordsworth, the Ode to Duty, the noblest 
ethical poem of our language. There he recounts 
his own moral history in its first stage. He tells 



THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 203 

how, beginning simply under the direction of his 
impulse, doing what he chose to do, he came, not 
to flagrant vice, but to the dissatisfaction and rest- 
lessness and uncertainty of having no master, or 
rather of having a master who governed by no law 
that his subjects could know. And then he sol- 
emnly gives himself into the keeping of the higher 
government of Duty, to do not what he chose, but 
what he knew was right, and declares the peace and 
light that he expects by such a change of mastery : 

Stem Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 

The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face : 

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 

And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 

And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. 

To humbler functions, awful Power ! 

I call thee : I myself commend 
Unto thy guidance from this hour, — 
Oh, let my weakness have an end ! 
Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 
The confidence of reason give ; 
And in the light of truth thy bondman let me live. 

That is the first great step in moral life — from 
Impulse into Duty. I hope that there are many of 
you who have taken it. I trust, as I look into these 
young people's faces, that I am looking upon many 
who, having " tired of unchartered freedom* ' and 
14 felt the weight of chance desires," have com- 
mended themselves to the guidance of the " awful 



204 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

power " of duty, and are trying everywhere to do 
what is right. And now I want to impress it upon 
you that this is not the end, that this Duty is not 
the ultimate and original governor of the human 
soul, that she is the " daughter of the voice of God," 
that she gets its holiness from her relationship to 
Him, and that no man has fully honored or obeyed 
Duty who has not seen in her the authority and 
beauty of her Father, God. 

All this appears in various ways. And first of all, 
I think, in a certain struggle of duty towards per- 
sonality. See what I mean. It is no doubt pos- 
sible to conceive of duty as perfectly impersonal. 
The great conviction of righteousness may seem to 
seize hold of nothing farther back than a strong cur- 
rent which runs mysteriously through all the world, 
setting toward the good and away from the bad. 
There is a certain grandeur in that abstract, imper- 
sonal conception. To identify oneself with that cur- 
rent, to be borne on toward goodness by this 
mysterious tendency that is in all things, to be in 
harmony with the deepest and best movement of 
the universe, — I own that that is an ambition which 
may illumine with its clear cold light the heart of 
man. We see it sweeping like the power of a voice- 
less, invisible wind across the world. Little and 
great things alike yield to it. To set oneself against 
it seems to be monstrous. To yield oneself to it 
seems to be noble. 

We own all this, but then come deeper questions. 
What is the nature of this world-wide force ? All 
force suggests the one only primary source of force 



THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 205 

of which we know, which is personal will. The 
force of gravitation makes us wonder whether there 
be not, somewhere, some one whose will it is that 
every atom should seek every other atom. But the 
force of morality is one that it is far less possible for 
us to think of as entirely impersonal. It appeals to 
the most personal and self-conscious part of us, — 
our conscience. Other tendencies we can, in some 
moods, fancy to have their lodgment in the very 
material particles of which the material universe is 
made, but of the tendency to righteousness our im- 
agination can never picture that. It could come 
only from the character of some righteous Being, ut- 
tering itself in the processes of the world He gov- 
erns. Let a man own the essential difference of 
right and wrong, and let him feel that the great 
central tendencies of this world are such as to fos- 
ter the right and to repress the wrong, and he can 
be no atheist. The fact of moral government im- 
plies a moral governor. This is the first expression 
of the struggle of morality towards religion. This 
is the beginning of the holiness of duty. 

But, again, there is another fact which I would 
call the spiritual suggestiveness of duty. Let me 
describe what I mean by that. Every attempt to 
do right has a tendency to reveal to us more spirit- 
ual ways of doing right, and our need of spiritual 
helps in doing it. For instance, a man determines 
to be honest. He conceives honesty in its narrow- 
est and hardest form. It is the mere paying of 
debts to which he has legally bound himself. It is 
justice without mercy. I do not say that many a 



206 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

man who sets out to be honest remains forever at 
that point, never gets beyond that first hard, crude 
justice ; but I am sure that when the determination 
is a truly moral one, when the man means to be 
honest solely because honesty is right, and not be- 
cause honesty is profitable, there is a perpetual and 
beautiful tendency of his honesty to deepen and re- 
fine itself. He is always being urged on to see that 
the truly honest man not merely pays his notes, but 
honors the unwritten rights of all his brethren, is 
bound to give them what they cannot claim, must 
have a perfect truthfulness of heart as well as of 
word. So the ambition of honesty grows within 
him until it includes all tenderness and truth. It is 
a condition of the soul and not a habit of the life. 
If it were a mere habit of the life, it might be made 
by drill and discipline. If it be a spiritual condi- 
tion, it can be reached only by spiritual inspiration. 
And so the man who, seeking honesty, began by 
making a resolution that he would not steal, by and 
by, when he recognizes the infiniteness of the task 
he has begun, is seen with hands reached out after 
spiritual help, crying, " Make me a clean heart, O 
God, and renew a right spirit within me." 

Or take the duty of charity. You begin by giv- 
ing a dollar to a poor man, because you ought to. 
That satisfies you at first. That is the highest no- 
tion of the duty of charity which you have reached. 
But, bear me witness, O, my friends, how the ex- 
pansive nature of that duty opens ! By and by you 
see that, not by giving the dollar, only by giving 
yourself, can you satisfy its claims. A keen, warm 



THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 207 

sympathy that makes your brother's need your own 
— nothing short of that is really charity. And to do 
that charity you must have — before you know it you 
find yourself praying for the Spirit of Him who 
gave Himself for us, who for our sakes became poor. 
That is w r hat I meant by the spiritual suggestiveness 
of duty. Every duty presses out and demands its 
highest motive and its fullest action. It must have, 
therefore, the highest help. It becomes infinite 
and claims God. In that tendency of it lies another 
element of the holiness of duty. 

But there is one thing more. Duty leads men 
into the presence of God, is the schoolmaster to 
bring us to Christ even more by its failures than by 
its triumphs, even more by what it cannot do than 
by what it lacks. What Duty lacks is the power of 
repair and restoration. I do not know what limit 
there is to the career over which the power of Duty 
might carry a man who was perpetually obedient, 
and never fell. Her hands are on his shoulders al- 
ways. She guides him along, and hurries him from 
virtue into virtue. The course in which she leads 
him grows more and more spiritual. He is amazed 
and fascinated at the new visions of goodness that 
she opens to him. Hand in hand the man and Duty, 
the man led by Duty, they go sweeping along, tri- 
umphant, almost defiant, in their strength. So all 
goes well, till the man falls. He is disobedient. 
He sins. And then how everything is changed ! 
Then Duty's power to help him is gone. Nay, it al- 
most seems as if her will to help him is gone. She 
who led him stands over him, as he lies there; she 



208 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

cannot raise him up; she seems almost pitiless as 
she looks down upon him and says: " You are not 
what I thought you. I did not know how weak you 
were. I can do nothing more for you. Some one 
stronger than I must help you." And then, in that 
weakness which Duty has made manifest, but cannot 
cure, the man reaches past the exacting Duty to the 
forgiving and restoring God. O, my dear friends, 
if you have ever struggled bravely, enthusiastically, 
and then, in breaking down and sinning, have dis- 
covered that you needed something which struggle 
could not give you, then you know what all this 
means. You look back on that old struggle, and it 
seems beautiful and sacred to you ; but its chief 
beauty and sacredness in your eyes is this — that it 
showed you your weakness and sent you to the 
strength of God to get what it could not give. As 
Duty stands upon the farther limit of her power, and 
sends the soul, for which she can no longer do what 
the soul needs, to Christ, — there is where Duty in 
her failure is noblest, and shows her completest 
holiness. 

These, then, are the holy tendencies of trying to 
do right. No man really enters on that struggle 
but before him there loom up, dim and beautiful in 
the distance towards which his face is set, the high- 
est attainments of the spiritual life. They are not to 
be reached by the mere powers which that struggle 
involves. They require, as we have seen, that that 
struggle should show its incompleteness, and should 
fail, in order that other powers may be found needed 
and be summoned to the soul 's help. But still, 






THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 2CKJ 

partly by what it is to bring itself, and partly by 
what, through its manifested incompleteness, it is to 
set the man to seeking somewhere else, the struggle 
after righteousness is the gateway to the profound- 
est spiritual life. 

How shall we think about the man of duty, the 
moral man, as he is commonly called ? First of all, 
we must define him clearly to ourselves. We must 
not give the name where it does not belong. He 
is not a moral man who simply falls in with right 
practices because they are the settled standards of 
the community he lives in, or because on the whole 
he perceives that they tend to a man's prosperity. 
A very large part of the confusion which, in other 
days more than now, has broken out in pulpit de- 
nunciations of what were called " merely moral 
men," came, I think, just in this way — by allowing 
the name to men who were not moral men at all. A 
man is not a good man simply because he does good 
things. The moral man is he who does good things 
because they are good, who loves righteousness for 
itself, who obeys his conscience, who is willingly 
and heartily in the power of the current which sets 
through and under all things to uprightness, the 
man who means and tries to be good. Of such a 
man all that I have said is true. He is always be- 
ing led towards the thought of a personal God. He 
is always discovering on some new side the infinite- 
ness and spirituality of duty. He is always finding 
that as duty becomes more spiritual he needs more 
manifestly a spiritual helper. And as his efforts 

fail he is always being driven to seek a Saviour, some 
14 



2IO THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

one who can rescue and repair his life. I do not be- 
lieve that any man can be truly moral and yet be 
merely moral. His struggle to do right must bring 
him into the Divine Presence. " I will wash mine 
hands in innocency, ,, says David, " and so will I go 
to Thine altar "; or as our Lord Himself declared, 
" If any man will do His will, he shall know of the 
doctrine." That is the holiness of duty. 

This connection between the moral and the spir- 
itual life is the key to all the history of the Jews and 
gives it all its interest. We ordinarily say that the 
Old Testament history was a preparation for the 
Messiah, the Law made ready for the Gospel. 
That is true, but that is not all. It was not simply 
that for two thousand years God was preparing for 
an event which only came when those two thousand 
years were over. It was that all through those two 
thousand years the Law of God was leading souls on 
into the Gospel which all the time was awaiting 
them. It was that always Moses was the door by 
which men came to a Christ who was always pres- 
ent. Through all those years, as any man tried to 
do what was right, the doors of spirituality opened 
before him, and he entered into some knowledge of 
the spiritual redemption. David said: " O, how I 
love thy Law " ; and straightway he was led on to 
all those Psalms which are full of the anticipated 
spirit of Christianity. Obedience and spiritual vision 
brighten and darken together in perfect correspon- 
dence — that is the beauty of the Old Testament. 
" The path of the just is as a shining light which 
shineth more and more unto the perfect day." And 



THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 211 

when at last the supreme spiritual manifestation 
came, and Christ appeared, it was because the Jews 
had disobeyed the moral Law that they rejected the 
spiritual Gospel. In the description of our Lord's 
own parable, it was because the laborers had seized 
the vineyard for themselves that they killed the 
owner's son who came to claim it. 

I think it is an interesting and a profitable specula- 
tion to consider what would come to pass if every- 
thing we call "religion" were to disappear from the 
earth to-day, and only conscience, only duty, should 
be left behind. It is what some people seem to de- 
sire. Imagine everything that belongs to the 
thought of God — all love to Him, all trust, all appli- 
cation for forgiveness — nay, even the knowledge of 
His existence, to be taken away, and what is left is 
conscience, the sense of right, and the impulse to 
do right which is in the human heart. What would 
the consequence be ? I think there is no doubt. 
Either the conscience would be swept away, unable 
to stand alone, and mankind become a race of dev- 
ils; or else conscience in its sore need would reach 
out its hands into the darkness and find for itself re- 
ligion. We fear the first alternative ; we fear, with 
almost certain apprehension, that what would come 
would be the moral devastation of the race. But, if 
in any way conscience proved itself too strong for 
that, then it would be a most interesting sight that 
we should see. The race would try in all its best 
parts to obey this mysterious monitor within. Men 
here and there and everywhere would be found try- 
ing to do right, not for any clear reason they could 



212 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

give you, but because something within them told 
them it was the thing for a man to do. But by and 
by, not starting from any one man's bold guess, but 
growing up as a misgiving and a hope in countless 
hearts, — as when before the sunrise millions of half- 
awakened particles of air are filled with dim sus- 
picions of the coming sun, — there would be found 
moving among men the thought, struggling into a 
belief, that all this impulse of righteousness must be 
the echoing will of some righteous One, — the first 
conception of a God. And then, as Conscience went 
on, she would find the duties to which she gave birth 
outgoing her. They would put forth wings and fly 
where she could not follow them. And so their new 
needs would begin to guess at new supplies. Since 
here are spiritual tasks, somewhere there must be 
spiritual help. 

And then would come failure and sin. Conscience 
would prove too weak. Her power would break, 
and yet her will would still be undiscouraged. Un- 
able to give up her great attempt, and yet finding 
in herself no power of repair, it is inconceivable that 
she should not with one bold leap, bracing herself 
for it on the divinest instincts that she found in man 
toward his fellow - man, guess at forgiveness. She 
could not tell its method. She could not invent for 
herself the divine wonder of the Cross ; but some- 
how, somewhere, she must hope that pardon and 
repair were waiting, and in the dim smoke of some 
altar she must send up her hope towards heaven — a 
God, a Guide, a Saviour. These would be her 
dreams, forced on her by the overwhelming necessi 






THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 213 

ties of the task she had undertaken. And these are 
religion. 

If among such a race there stood some keen ob- 
server, some one who knew of the old religion which 
had been taken out of the race to make room for 
this experiment of " mere morality/ ' and who had 
seen it go with pleasure, how familiar would appear 
to him these thoughts and hopes as they issued from 
the heart of this struggling human nature — a God, 
a Guide, a Saviour! "Ah! " he would say, " Here 
are the old superstitions back again. The eradica- 
tion could not have been quite complete. Some 
roots must have been left below when the tree was 
cut down to the ground." But no! That is not 
it. It would be something far more significant than 
that. It would be the holiness of duty declaring 
itself. It would be the human conscience by its di- 
vine necessity claiming religion. 

And why should not that be true in a man which 
is true in a race? If all religion seems to be gone out 
of a man, if nothing spiritual lights up his life, what 
will you do ? Pray for him ? Yes, pray with all 
your might, with all your heart. But what will you 
try to get him to do ? First of all, most of all, to 
do his duty, the duty that he sees. That duty, 
thoroughly done, must bring him into sight of God. 
There are a thousand cases where the unwillingness 
to do some right, the clinging to some old known 
sin, is what hinders the man from all the richness of 
the spiritual life. The giving up of the sin will not 
make the man spiritual. It is not taking off the 
stone that makes the grass grow where it lay ; it only 



214 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

lets the grass grow. Here is perhaps the secret of the 
spiritual blight that is upon your life. Oh, if you 
are not spiritually minded, do not wait for myste- 
rious light and vision. Go and give up your dearest 
sin. Go and do what is right. Go and put yourself 
thoroughly into the power of the holiness of duty. 

We have reached, then, what is the beginning of 
light in all the darkness of the moral world. That 
darkness meets us everywhere. It is a sign not of 
clear-sightedness, but of superficiality and blind- 
ness, when a man says lightly and easily that all the 
world is clear to him, that the thick-crowding ques- 
tions do not trouble him. They trouble most men 
sadly. How are the evil and the good distributed ? 
Why, if goodness is the only joy, is goodness made 
so hard for men to reach ? Why should truth be 
at once so necessary and so uncertain to the hu- 
man soul ? What is the meaning of all the seeming 
failures, the attempts that never come to anything, 
the souls that earn a little goodness and then lose it 
all, the lives that start upward and are beaten back 
by cruel circumstances ? If there is a God and He 
is good, why is the world so full of wretchedness ? 
I think there is an answer to every one of these 
questions, taken by itself, but all together they come 
flocking up about us, and the air is thick with them. 
You can kill every separate gnat easily enough, but 
the whole host of them together darkens the sun. 

It is when the soul's light is really darkened by 
such questions that the real holiness of duty is made 
manifest. Then let Conscience speak. Then listen 
to her voice implicitly. However all these questions 



THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 21 5 

may be answered, whether or not they have an an- 
swer, it is right to do right, it is right to be honest, 
to be kind, to sacrifice yourself for others, to be 
pure. It is wrong to do wrong. It is wrong to be 
cowardly, or cruel, or dishonest, or impure. Take 
Duty by the hand and go where she will lead you. 
Then you have one strong thing to hold to in the 
midst of the confusion. 

If this were all, if it led to nothing more, it would 
not satisfy us. Merely to go on doing duty, with 
no light — nothing to which the soul might fasten its 
affections, no answer opening to its questions any- 
where — this could not satisfy a man who is both 
soul and conscience. The satisfaction comes as, 
gradually, Duty proves herself to be the usher to 
something greater than herself. It is very strange, 
I think, to see how very apt any strong sense of 
duty is to become religious. I turned over not long 
ago the pages of the Harvard Biographies, which 
many of you know, the lives of the graduates of 
Harvard who died in the war; and I could not but 
be struck by seeing how many of them, as their life 
grew deeper and more intense, became more and 
more religious, honored God as their Lord, trusted 
Him as their Father, and made His Son their friend. 
It was not fear of pain or death. They were not that 
kind of men. It was that, stung to higher duty than 
they had known before, all their best needs and 
powers had come out and, realizing the fulness of 
the nature God had given them, they had found in- 
deed that "nor man nor nature satisfy whom only 
God created.' ' 



2l6 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

Suppose a moral man in Palestine, in Christ's 
days, in one of those remote and dingy villages, a 
man who, with small light, with Pharisees wearying 
him with their minute and meaningless ceremonial, 
and with a Sadducee or two singing scepticism into 
his ears, had still been trying to do right. He had 
struggled against temptation. He had been sober, 
honest, kind, and pure. A hard life and a noble 
one. But now suppose that Christ comes through 
that village, and, " as His custom was," the Saviour 
goes into the little synagogue or stops under the 
shadow of a house and talks with those who come. 
As He tells about His Father's house, about the 
grace that brings men back to God, about the inex- 
tinguishable love in the Divine Heart, about Him- 
self as the Saviour, and repeats perhaps the parable 
of the prodigal son; especially as He stands there 
by His very presence offering Himself as the foun- 
tain out of which whosoever thirsts may drink, — who 
is the first who feels His power and answers to His 
call ? Will any one come before that anxious man 
who has learned his needs by trying to do his duty ? 
We can almost see his face settle into the repose of 
peace, and the lines of his anxious questioning fade 
out of it. Here is the solution of his problems, the 
satisfaction of his wants. He looks back and sees 
how all his struggles have been preparing for the 
day when he should meet this Saviour. The Law, 
his schoolmaster, has brought him to Christ. He 
looks back and is thankful for the holiness of duty. 

I think that this is just the truth which many 
people need. You say: " I am not — I cannot be — 



THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 217 

religious. There is nothing spiritual in me. I can 
do nothing holy. ' ' Oh, you are wrong ! God has not 
made any soul destitute of that deepest and best 
prerogative of humanity, — the power to live by the 
unseen, to worship and love Him. But be you 
wrong or right your immediate course is clear. 
However you may think that holiness is closed to 
you, duty is open. You can do, to-day and to-mor- 
row, what you know you ought to do. And O, my 
friend, remember that as long as you do not go in 
through that first and outmost vestibule, you have 
no right to complain that you do not reach the in- 
most chamber. As long as you are leaving plain 
duty undone, you have no right to say that you 
cannot be religious. 

There is great beauty in the dignity with which 
this truth clothes the ordinary things of life. Duty 
is busied with small things. But to the things which 
Duty works with she imparts her own holiness. 
When her work is perfect and she has brought her 
souls to the completeness of Christ, they must look 
back and see a sacredness in everything over which 
they once conquered a temptation and made them- 
selves do what they did not want to, but knew they 
ought to. And as any promise of that consumma- 
tion opens to them now, they must already see some 
beginning of that sacredness in the material on 
which their daily task is done. 

* The Law is holy." Count your law holy. 
See what your duty is, and count that duty sacred. 
Let no hardness or sordidness upon the face of it 



218 THE HOLINESS OF DUTY 

blind you to the great and blessed things which it 
can do for your soul, — and will, if you will only let 
it. First give yourself to it completely. Do it 
with all your strength. And then let it lead you 
beyond yourself. Or let it introduce you to your 
deeper self, to the needs and powers which require 
and can appropriate Christ. Let it bring you to the 
help of the Mercy Seat and the pardon of the Cross. 
Duty shall never pass away. The hardness will 
be all gone out of it in heaven. But still there we 
shall do the right because we know we ought to do 
it; and thereby we shall be made more and more 
capable of the knowledge and the love of God to all 
eternity. 



XIII. 

PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTAND- 
ING. 

" The peace of God, which passeth all understanding." — Philip- 

pians iv. 7. 

When a man of disorderly and loose ways of 
thinking becomes excited, he will deal in mere ex- 
aggeration; but an orderly and clear thinker, the 
more earnest he becomes, will make all the clearer 
discriminations and use words with all the more 
definite meanings. St. Paul was very much in 
earnest when he said these words. He was invok- 
ing a rich blessing on his best-beloved disciples. 
And it seems to us perhaps, at first, as if it was 
merely a glowing and beautiful hyperbole when he 
desired for them " the peace which passeth all un- 
derstanding/ ' The words charm us with their ca- 
dence; and the idea as we vaguely discern it seems 
very rich,— a peace so deep, so high, so still, that 
no one can know how deep and high and still it is, — 
a surpassing, a transcendent peace, — this is what he 
seems to be asking for his friends. But that is not 
like Paul. He meant always something accurate. 
He loved preciseness of thought, and it was one 
sign of his greatness of mind that he could keep his 

219 



220 PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

thought clear and sharp even when it was glowing 
with feeling. It was not blurred by its warmth and 
fire. He meant, then, by the "peace which passeth 
all understanding " not merely a certain degree, but 
a certain kind, a certain quality of peace. I want to 
study his expression with you and see if we can 
know what he is talking of. If we can, we shall do 
well; for this "peace which passeth all understand- 
ing" is really the whole Christian life seen from one 
of its richest and completest sides. 

Peace is the under-desire of all work and life. 
No matter what struggle men are involved in, and 
no matter how much men enjoy their struggle, 
there always is below their labor a wish for peace, 
a sense that peace is the final and ideal condition of 
all things. No man who has crossed the border of 
barbarism or who has any idea of life above that 
of a bandit and a robber, will ever dare openly to 
proclaim that tumult and confusion and war are the 
true and permanent conditions for humanity to live 
in. The soldier delights in war and chafes at the 
very thought of stagnant, peaceful days, but still 
he dares propound no theory except that war is 
a temporary thing, the purifier of corruption, the 
settler of old quarrels, and so the true builder of a 
higher peace. The reformer shakes the foundations 
of old institutions, but his plea must always be that 
he seeks to dig deeper and lay stronger the great 
stones on which he may construct the new. The 
sceptic touches with his withering finger the fair- 
ness of a soul's belief and brings confusion where 
there used to be the placidness of an accepted creed, 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 221 

but hardly any thinker has ventured to praise 
scepticism as the true resting-place (or floating- 
place) of a human spirit. The disturbance of faith 
always claims to be in order to a readjustment of 
faith. So everywhere peace and not war is the de- 
sire, — nay, peace is the under-desire out of which 
war springs. War is the means, peace is the end. 
There may be always tumult about us here; but, 
whether men's dispositions make them look back or 
forward, they always discern peace in the distance 
— a Golden Age behind or a Millennium before. 

And this universal desire of peace is the reason 
why men have pictured it so differently to them- 
selves. What all men wish and no man completely 
has, each man will image to himself after his own 
character. It is the universal ideals of the race — 
Freedom, Strength, Peace — which have been most 
variously conceived, and so most often misconceived. 
This is the reason why the sources and the character 
of peace are so differently pictured by different men, 
and by different men at different stages of their 
lives. Now, as we think of St. Paul's life, we can 
see that there must have been two different ideas 
of peace — that is, of repose and entire satisfaction — 
in his mind at different periods of his career; and a 
comparison of these two will give us at once the 
fundamental idea of what he said to his Philippians. 
Paul appears to us first, you remember, as a Jewish 
student. In the Gamaliel period of his life his ob- 
ject was to learn. Truth, as it could be brought to 
the understanding, was the object of his appetite; 
and when he looked forward and thought of the 



222 PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

ideal of life, it was of a mind which, having studied 
abstract truth and human nature and the Word of 
God, had adjusted all their relations, settled every 
question, and understood the whole. By and by 
there happened a great change in his life and he be- 
came the servant of Jesus Christ. A new ambition 
opened to him, a new appetite was stirred. The 
heart and the spiritual nature asserted their su- 
premacy; and now the peace which loomed in sight 
and gradually closed around and filled his life with 
its promise, was the rest of the nature upon that 
new Master in dependence and in loyalty. 

These were the two: Paul the young student was 
trying to understand the world so that he might 
harmoniously adjust himself to it, compel its powers 
to answer his demands, force it to satisfy his ambi- 
tions, — it was the mastery of his mind making the 
world his servant ; Paul the Apostle was trying to 
get nearer to Christ by more perfect obedience and 
love, — it was the heart fastening itself upon a per- 
fectness which it loved and whom it trusted. Here 
are two different conceptions of peace, — one of 
mastery, the other of dependence. One is con- 
quered by the mind; the other is bestowed upon 
the heart. One is within the range of the under- 
standing which analyzes and investigates its 
grounds; the other goes beyond or passes the un- 
derstanding and relies upon a Being who, in un- 
known ways and out of infinite resources, provides 
and supports the entirely reliant life. 

As soon as we contrast in any way those resources 
and helps which come to men through the intelli- 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 223 

gence and through the heart, as soon as we claim 
for the heart a power to lay hold on truth which 
the understanding cannot grasp, we invite of course 
the ready criticism of sentimentalism and feebleness. 
But it is needful to assert the true dignity of the 
human heart, to claim that, rightly conceived, it is 
neither the jealous antagonist nor the feeble ally of 
the human intelligence. Rightly conceived, the 
heart is the completeness of the man, outgoing but 
embracing the intelligence and reason. The heart 
cannot be truly given to any work unless the judg- 
ment approves ; but the giving of the heart is some- 
thing far larger, richer, fuller, than the approval of 
the judgment. You can not truly love a man unless 
your intelligence endorses him ; and yet the endorse- 
ment of the intelligence is only the beginning. 
Then comes in the love, and through its warm at- 
mosphere your friend gives to you and you give to 
him what never could have passed back and forth 
through the cold medium of the intelligence. No; 
the heart is larger than the understanding, and 
through it may come messages and gifts which the 
understanding has no power to bring. 

Have we not, then, already seen something of 
what the distinction is? There is a peace within the 
understanding, and there is a peace that goes be- 
yond the understanding and finds its warrant in 
personal trust and love. The peace within the 
understanding is the result of a clearly perceived 
proportion between need and supply, between 
danger and precaution: "I have seen what peril is 
likely to occur, and I have guarded against it; I 



224 PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

have found out all the weak points in my house 
where the fire or the hurricane might smite it, and 
I have strengthened and secured them ; therefore I 
may dismiss my anxieties and sit down at rest/' 

The peace which goes beyond the understanding 
says: "I have done all this as well as I knew how, 
but there are regions of danger which I cannot ex- 
plore, there are perilous forces which I cannot 
measure. The universe is large, and out of any 
distant corner of it there may come a sudden blow 
striking right at my life. Beyond what I can pro- 
vide for, then, I find out Him who is in all the uni- 
verse, and, loving Him, I trust myself upon His 
love. It is not knowledge, now, of what will come 
or how it can be met ; it is only the sympathetic 
apprehension of His love and care who is all-strong, 
all-wise. This is what I rest upon. This is the 
confidence in which I sleep by night and work by 
day." 

It is a peace which passeth understanding and 
fulfils itself in love. 

It is easy to comprehend, because the difference 
is everywhere. You are on a great ocean steamer, 
and you go through its wilderness of machinery and 
see how part is fitted into part and every danger is 
provided for. Perhaps you know enough about it 
all to understand how thoroughly the work is done, 
and to be sure that mechanical art can make no bet- 
ter. Then you go and lie down in your berth and 
feel safe. But can your safety come from what 
you have seen and understood? Must it not come 
finally from something which you cannot see and 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 225 

cannot understand? The final confidence must be 
personal confidence. It must be on the skill and 
faithfulness of the captain who uses and commands 
all this machinery that you ultimately rely. Only 
on character finally can peace be built, and while 
we use our understandings to discover characters, 
our deepest knowledge of them still must come by 
intuitions that surpass the reason. 

The peace that lies within the understanding is 
what men are seeking everywhere in some of its 
many forms. Think what two or three of them are. 
In the first place there is the peace of a sufficient 
fortune. A man says: "If I can be rich I shall be 
secure/* He counts up the dangers one by one: 
"Hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, exposure — 
yes, I can avoid them all if I am rich. Money can 
build the house and spread the table and hire the 
servants. These needs and money meet each 
other/' And so the struggle begins, and the compe- 
tent fortune by and by is earned. And what then? 
All that his understanding has anticipated is ful- 
filled. He is warm and dry, and has the food that 
he desires. The machine is fed with its due nutri- 
ment and runs its course perfectly. Only this comes, 
— that when a need arrives which the mere under- 
standing has not anticipated, when the heart which 
lies out of the region of the understanding lifts up 
its voice and demands its satisfaction, or when the 
conscience grows restless and exacting — then this 
adjustment which has been arranged between money 
and the animal wants fails and falls short. Here is 

a further need, and somewhere there must come 
is 



226 PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

forth a further supply. And so the town is full of 
rich men who are not finding in their riches the satis- 
faction which they ought to find. They can reason 
it all out ; they ought to feel safe and rest secure, 
but they are all restlessness. They have earned 
peace, but it does not come to them. From regions 
out beyond comes a disturbance and unrest for 
which they have made no provision. 

This same is true of all the self-sufficiencies of life, 
of all the peace that builds itself only on prosperity. 
A man is thoroughly well and strong, and every re- 
lationship with all his fellow-men is bright and 
happy. He lives with them in that happy condition 
in which he never seems to need their help, and yet 
they are always ready to lavish their help upon him. 
No care nor sickness seems to break in on his lot. 
He has plenty of work to do, yet not a work to 
wear him out. In bodily condition and in well- 
adjusted relationships he seems to be fit for and 
equal to his task of life. No doubt such a man is 
at peace up to a certain line. His quiet home, 
his calm, smooth-flowing days, proclaim it. He 
matches his dangers against his power and seems 
to see how he can meet them all. It is the peace 
of self-sufficiency. It is a peace within his un- 
derstanding. 

But on what does the permanence of that peace 
depend? Upon the preservation of that balance 
between the powers and the dangers. Every 
glimpse of dangers which these powers cannot 
match, every suggestion of the decay or loss of 
these powers of health and independence destroys 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 227 

the balance instantly. That is what disturbs the 
complacency of a prosperous man of the world when 
some great demand — the need of spiritual conver- 
sion or the necessity of death — looms in his sight. 
There is something which is not provided for in all 
the armory of his self-sufficiency. There is a de- 
mand for which his well-stocked life can furnish no 
supply. There is a need which goes beyond his 
understanding, and only by a reliance which goes 
beyond the understanding, too, only by reliance on 
an Infinite Person can these infinite necessities be 
met. 

All this is plainest, I suppose, with reference to 
the peace of the intellect, the peace which a man 
has in the truth which he holds. There, more than 
anywhere else, we can discern the difference between 
the peace which lies within the understanding and 
the higher peace which passeth understanding. 
Here is the universe all full of questions, the prob- 
lems about truth starting on every side. Suppose 
that a man thought that he had found the answers 
to them, that in some creed or system which he had 
embraced all difficulties were dissolved. He could 
tell why evil is permitted, and how men shall be 
judged, and what this continual difference of the 
fortunes of mankind means. He and his system 
had fathomed all the depths, unravelled all the 
contradictions. 

There must be a strong satisfaction in a feeling 
such as that. No wonder that men seek it. No 
wonder that with one oracle or another men are 
always trying to think that they have got completely 



228 PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

rid of doubt, and answered all the questions, and 
banished mystery out of the world. That is the 
peace of the understanding, the pure self-satisfaction 
of the intellect which seems to be quite sufficient 
for its task. Perhaps some time some of us have 
had a dream like that. Perhaps we lived in such a 
dream some time, and then what happened ? What 
became of it ? Simply some question came that 
defied us to answer it. Some one of the old ques- 
tions that we thought were answered woke at some 
provocation of our own experience and pressed 
home on us with its sharp spear pointed with fire. 
Our peace was shattered. The settled was not 
settled. The trim, snug answers burst and broke 
with the swelling problems. Ah, how continual 
such terrible surprises are! Who does not know 
such experiences? 

Just when we are safest, there 's a sunset-touch, 
A fancy from a flower bell, some one's death, 
A chorus-ending from Euripides, 
And that 's enough for fifty hopes and fears, 
As old and new at once as Nature's self, 
To rap and knock and enter in our soul, 
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, 
Round the old Idol, on his base again, — 
The grand Perhaps ! 

Thus was the peace made and built up within an 
understanding broken and lost by the reasserted 
mystery of life — the little creed overcome by the 
great world. And what then ? Unless out of that 
mystery itself could come a peace, there was no 
hope. Unless it all — vague, infinite as it was — 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 229 

could be possessed and filled with a Being whom 
we knew, and who from His home far beyond our 
understanding called to us and took us to Himself, 
we were all lost. God grant that that has come, 
that out beyond the creeds and systems we believe 
in we have come to believe in God, taking our 
satisfaction and content that all is well, not from 
our mind's discernment of the goodness of each de- 
tail, but from our soul's assurance of His love and 
power. If that has come, then a new peace has 
opened on us, a peace in Him, a peace of soul and 
not of mind, a peace of love and not of reason, a 
peace not hedged and bounded by our own intelli- 
gence, a peace that passeth understanding, and is 
sure of all things because it is sure of Him. 

How can I possess my soul in peace when so 
much everywhere is in disturbance ? I do not, 
cannot, dare not, say that I can see the right in 
every wrong, the light in every darkness, but when 
I know that God is, and that He sees what I cannot 
see, only then comes the higher peace, — 

Well roars the storm to those who hear 
A deeper voice across the storm. 

Is it not clear, then ? Within the world which 
our understandings can embrace there is a peace 
which we can estimate. Its assurance lies in a com- 
parison of clearly seen dangers with clearly seen 
supplies. I see such and such expenses, and lo, 
here is the money to meet them with. I know of 
this or that strain coming, but, behold! I am well 



23O PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

and strong and prosperous, and I can bear it. Here 
are hard questions, but here in the other hand are 
their sufficient answers. 

If life stopped there, all would be well. But life 
will not stop there. Never can we say: " Now I 
have provided for the last danger and answered the 
last question — * Soul, thou hast much goods laid up 
for many years/ " Before the words are out of our 
lips another danger, a new question, comes down 
upon us out of the infiniteness of life behind us. 
There is where the peace of self-sufficiency breaks 
down. We men here on the shore of human life, 
with just a little of its very border appropriated, 
seem to be like Crusoe on the beach of his unknown 
island. We guard against a few immediate dangers, 
we build our hut and our stockade, we plant our 
plot of corn, we light our fire, and we load our 
gun, and then we sit down and try to call that peace 
and safety. And as we sit there we feel how little 
way our peace extends. How little of the island 
we have comprehended! Our peace stops at the 
line of trees which backs our little beach with its 
dark shadow. Beyond that all is mystery and 
danger. What foe may come out from it upon us 
at any moment we cannot tell. 

I appeal to your own knowledge of your own 
lives to testify to what I say. Is there not, with 
the most safely guarded of us, a haunting sense of 
something that money or health or prosperity or 
study cannot do ? We know they all exhaust 
themselves. We know there is a region of human 
need which they are powerless to enter. What is 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 23 1 

there that can help us there ? what peace beyond 
our understanding and our planning ? More than 
we know, that question lies heavily upon many of 
our souls which seem easy and careless. 

And to that question the soul gives its answer in 
one great word — "God." Beyond our understand- 
ing and our planning, inhabiting and filling with 
Himself that unexplored region, the Source and 
Governor of all that issues from it, there is God, 
" the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity.' ' 
It is by apprehending Him that the infinity in which 
He dwells becomes peaceful and secure for us. And 
He is apprehended not by the understanding, but 
by the heart. The understanding tells us that He 
is, but it is the heart that goes forth after Him and 
finds Him, and fastens itself upon Him, and in Him 
makes the infinity in which He dwells its own. 

Once more recur a moment to the figure which 
we used. Still we may think of the man living 
upon the strip of beach which is all that he has 
apprehended, where he has built his house and set 
up his defences ; only now the great wilderness be- 
hind him, though unexplored by him, is known to 
and governed by one whom he knows, in whom he 
trusts and who in many ways has shown his good- 
ness to him. So, when a man loves God, back from 
the little fragment of life which he knows, stretches 
the great immensity of life which he cannot know, 
which passes his understanding, but which God 
understands, and so which, while it never loses its 
mystery, loses all its fear for the servant of God 
who is in communion with his Lord through love. 



232 PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

Is not this what St. Paul means ? " The peace of 
God which passeth all understanding/' he says. It 
is first a peace which God possesses. No fear, no 
trouble in the universe can touch His perfect mind. 
He knows, He governs all. With Him the peace 
is self-contained. It is absolute self-sufficiency. 

What thought can be more rich or solemn than 
this of God so utterly filling the universe with Him- 
self that out of no unexplored corner of it can start 
any anxiety to surprise Him ? His pure peace in 
Himself — how it throws out in contrast the fright- 
ened, anxious, nervous lives we live! This is the 
" peace of God," the peace which God has that 
passes our understanding; but, then, that peace is 
communicable to us — not through the understand- 
ing, for that does not reach far enough to take it, 
but through love. It is something which He may 
give to us, something on which we may enter as we 
enter into Him ; and then for us, too, there is safety 
in those realms of life where, save as we go in Him 
by love, we cannot go at all. 

Ah, you watch some poor, ignorant, faithful soul 
taking up a duty that you see is endless, giving him- 
self to a sacrifice that reaches to the very sundering 
of soul and body! He does it with a calm, bright 
face, and you think that he is ignorant, he does not 
know what he is doing. " My poor friend/' you 
say to him, " have you weighed the cost ? Do you 
know where that task will carry you? Do you know 
that you can meet the labor and the suffering that 
it will bring ? " "No," he replies, "I know nothing. 
I know only God, and He is in the task which He 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 233 

has given; and let it carry me where it will, it can- 
not carry me beyond Him." That is the peace of 
God which passeth understanding. A little child 
is putting a fearless foot down into the river beyond 
which lies eternity. " Poor child," you say, " do 
you know the eternity which you are going to ? 
Do you know what you will do, what you will be, 
in that mysterious land ? Do you understand im- 
mortality ?" " No," he replies, " I understand 
nothing. But I love God. I am going to Him. 
And eternity is not so vast that, in all of it, I can 
go beyond Him." That is "the peace of God 
which passeth all understanding." 

And this makes very plain to us the work of 
Christ. What does He do for us ? What was He 
doing in the struggle of His life ? What was He 
doing on His cross ? What is He doing forever at 
His Father's throne ? He is giving us the peace of 
God. And how ? By making God real to us, and 
bringing us to God. All is for that. He reconciles 
us to God. He takes a poor rebellious, restless life ; 
He touches it with His power; He wakens its ca- 
pacity for gratitude ; He makes it penitent and then 
forgives it; He breaks away the obstacles that lie 
between it and its Father: He casts His own love 
into the deep gulf and fills it. And then over that 
filled gulf the love of the changed soul can go unhin- 
dered to God and lay hold upon Him. And there, 
in Him, it finds the peace it never knew before — a 
peace that covers every region which God's life 
covers, a peace which goes where the understanding 
cannot go, and faces the spectres of the spirit and 



234 PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 

the conscience, and subdues them in the strength 
of God. 

" There is no peace, saith my God, to the 
wicked." How could there be ? The essence of 
wickedness is that it is separation from God. And 
so it cannot have the peace of God. All fear be- 
longs to it. But Christ takes the soul out of its 
wickedness and brings it to God, and there its peace 
begins. Once more to turn back to our figure: 
Christ is the Son and Other Self of Him to whom 
belongs the infinite land upon whose beach we live. 
And He comes down to where we are encamped, 
and, at all sacrifice of Himself, tells us of the love 
of Him who owns it all and wins our love for Him. 
This is the peace He brings, His peace which he 
" leaves " among us. 

I am afraid — nay, I am sure — that much which I 
have said to you to-day seems to a good many of 
you very mystical. What do we mean by mystical ? 
Beyond our understanding! But it is not to the 
weakest of us, it is often to the very strongest of us 
that, many and many a time in life, the narrowness 
of the understanding grows oppressive and we long 
to look beyond it. Often, as we sail so steadily on, 
from what and into what we know so little, we long 
to forget the clank of the machinery by which we 
sail, and to stand on the rolling deck and look out 
into the mystery of the ocean on which we sail. 
That mystery of life is God. Shall I guard and 
watch my engines and never question the ocean and 
the sky ? Shall I watch and guard my business, 
and never, by prayer, by obedience, by communion, 



PEACE WHICH PASSETH UNDERSTANDING 235 

draw near to and ask the deepest things of Him ? 
The soul that loves God has entered into that 
mystery of His Being. To it come intimations of 
His Will which it cannot analyze or justify, but 
which it follows as the laws, the secrets, of its life. 
To it comes knowledge which men may call foolish- 
ness, but which it knows is deeper truth. On it 
rests a peace which passes understanding, but is full 
to the outmost borders with living love. 

Oh, do not be afraid to let your love carry you 
beyond your understanding. Our danger is not 
mysticism. Let the higher life sound to you as 
mystical and cloudy as it will, nevertheless, enter 
into the cloud without a fear. Follow Christ, by 
earnest faith, by obedience, by loving imitation, 
trying everywhere to keep near to Him by being 
like Him, and He will lead you certainly to God 
and to "the peace of God which passeth all under- 
standing." 



XIV. 
THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE. 

" And there was also a strife among them, which of them should 
be accounted the greatest." — Luke xxii. 24. 

The strife was among the disciples of Jesus, and 
it took place at the very table where He sat with 
them on the night before His crucifixion. We say 
" How strange it was!" and it was very strange, in- 
deed. That the personal presence of their Master 
should not have taken those men up above all ques- 
tion of precedence or superiority, and made each re- 
joice to hope and believe that the other was a greater 
man and a better disciple than himself, — this cer- 
tainly was strange. But, after all, there is some- 
thing to be gained out of the story, in the reminder 
which it gives us that these men were still men, that 
even with Christ visibly among them, the occupa- 
tion of their natures by His power had to be gradual 
and slow, and so that we must not be too ready to 
despair either of ourselves or of each other. It 
ought to make us see how the new power of Christ 
does not destroy, but purifies and uses the faculties 
and dispositions which it finds in man. This last 
will be the special lesson from the story on which I 
shall dwell to-day. 

236 



THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 237 

Think, then, of that old picture. Artists have 
tried to put it upon canvas, and not one of them 
has satisfied that imagination of it which has been 
bright in Christian souls that saw in it the essence 
of their faith. Jesus, the Master, sits at the table, 
and all around Him are His twelve disciples. He is 
the Life, and so His presence sheds vitality on 
every side. It is like the sun shining on a fertile 
field ; all kinds of dispositions and emotions spring 
up freely. Love, regret, indignation, resolution, 
expectation — these and a host of others are all there. 
And among all the rest, out of these fruitful hearts 
quickened by the warm sunshine of Christ's nature 
present with them, springs up emulation. The 
disciples begin to look suspiciously on one another. 
The clear air becomes thick with comparisons. They 
are not content to be asking simply how great and 
good each of them can be, but there grows up in 
each soul a desire to be greater and better than the 
others. There is a strife among them which of 
them shall be accounted the greatest. 

We want, first of all, to recognize how perfectly 
natural this is. There are two ways in which a man 
may estimate his progress and the position which 
he holds at any moment. There is the absolute 
method, and there is the comparative method. 
Take your profession. You are engaged in some 
one of the great recognized departments of human 
action. You have been engaged in it for a long time. 
You have been working as a mechanic, a lawyer, a 
merchant, or a physician for many years. You ask 
yourself some morning, "How do I stand to-day? " 



238 THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

I am sure there is no better test of what sort of 
man you are than the way in which you go about to 
get your answer. More significant than the answer 
which you get is the way in which you go about 
to get it. On the one hand, you may look round 
and see how other men are doing. You may take 
men whose life in your profession is recognized as a 
success, and ask yourself whether you are as suc- 
cessful as they. "Am I as honest, as prosperous, 
as well esteemed as this man or as that man who, 
upon the whole, is accepted as a fair specimen of 
what a man in this profession ought to be? " You 
try to find your true place in a long scale marked 
and graduated by the greater or less attainment of 
your brethren. That is the comparative method of 
self-estimate. 

On the other hand, instead of looking about upon 
your brethren you may sit down and try to realize 
absolutely what your profession and the man work- 
ing in it ought to be. You try to summon back 
that vision of it which you saw burning before your 
imagination when you first set out upon it. You 
summon its essential principles and pure ideas. 
You ask yourself how far you have satisfied the 
final purposes for which your occupation ]jias its 
being in the world. That is the absolute method 
of self-estimate. 

The difference is clear. And if we let ourselves 
think, not of two men calmly judging of their lives 
in these two ways, but of two men living their lives 
under the impulses which these two ways of judg- 
ment will create, — then the difference is more strike 



THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 239 

ing still. One man is anxious to outstrip as many 
of his brethren as possible; the other is anxious to 
get as near as possible to the true standard of his 
occupation. One is all keenly alive with rivalry; 
the other is earnestly set upon attainment. 

When we state it thus, I think we see at once 
how the absolute method and impulse are finer and 
higher than the comparative, and at the same time 
we realize how largely the comparative method and 
impulse rule the lives of men. Look at the boy at 
school ; is it always pure love of learning that makes 
him struggle so to learn his lesson? Surely not! 
It is the passion to outstrip the other boys and win 
the head of the class or the medal that shall show 
he has surpassed them. Look at the busy citizen, 
eager in all public affairs, restless, observant, im- 
patient, putting a useful hand to necessary tasks of 
every kind. Is it a simple public spirit that inspires 
him? Surely not! A desire to be first among the 
citizens, to be more valued by his fellow-citizens 
than any other— that certainly is a large part of 
what we see kindling in his eye and moving in his 
tireless hands and feet. It is a race, not merely to 
do the distance and to do it in a certain time, but 
to do it in shorter time than other men, — that is 
what makes it fascination. To see our fellow-runner, 
who is far in front of us at first, grow nearer as we 
gain upon him, and by and by to feel ourselves close 
at his side ; and then to hear his footfalls die away 
behind us as we shoot far ahead, — that is a large 
part of the fascination of the running. To take out 
competition, to bid each man do his work from the 



24O THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

pure impulse of the work itself, to bid each man run 
round the race-course of his life alone, do we not 
know what listless runners that would make? 

When we talk thus of rivalry or emulation, we 
see immediately its dangers and how great they are. 
We see how rivalry must oftentimes be tempted to 
detract from the good name of others, and to hold 
those back whom it is hard to keep up with or sur- 
pass. That is one danger. And there also is the 
danger of too easy self-content, the danger which 
comes to all of us when we have found no com- 
petitors in any particular race whom we could not 
outstrip, and yet are far from having put forth all 
the power that is in us, or from reaching the goal 
which is the only really worthy satisfaction. 

Among the men whose struggles are comparative, 
not absolute, the ugly, envious faces and the com- 
placent, satisfied faces are too common. If they are 
strugglers hard-pushed by their competitors, they 
grow jealous; if they have won their victory and 
are no longer likely to be outrun, they grow self- 
satisfied. To be eager and earnest, and yet not to 
want to hinder any other man from doing his best ; 
to be calm and serene, and yet to be full of energy 
and hope of higher things, — this comes to him 
whose life aims at the absolute, who strives, not to 
be stronger than his brethren, but to be ever stronger 
than himself, ever nearer to the fullest strength 
which it is in him to obtain. 

Rivalry and emulation, then, if they have their 
places at all in a well-ordered human life, as im- 
pulses of action, must be satisfied to be wholly sub- 



THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 24I 

ordinate and accidental. Two regiments start side 
by side to storm the works of the enemy. On their 
fierce rush across the plain each may well be stimu- 
lated by the desire to beat the other and come first 
to where the hand-to-hand battle must be fought; 
but the real inspiration must be in the frowning 
guns of the foe and the determination that they 
must be taken. 

One would like to speak urgently and earnestly 
to the young people here, and remind them of how 
much of the solidity and independent strength of 
life depends upon their learning very early to de- 
pend upon absolute and personal relations to the 
objects which they desire. Insist on feeling the in- 
trinsic power of the things you seek. So, and so 
only, can you be sure that even if every other 
seeker should become discouraged and drop away, 
your search would still go on. You start upon a 
course of reading or of study with congenial com- 
panions. A generous rivalry begins at once. Who 
will be quickest and most faithful? Who will pierce 
most deeply and directly to the author's meaning? 
That is very good, of course. But if that be all, or 
be the principal thing, the whole enterprise is weak. 
The book itself, the author's valuable thought, the 
truth he has to tell, — in these must be the real at- 
traction. If you are really set on these, then you 
may gladly accept the stimulus and pleasant excite- 
ment which comes from matching mind with mind 
among your fellow-students; just as a ship bound 
for the North Pole may easily indulge, some sunny 

day, in a friendly race with another ship, bound for 
16 



242 THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

the same mysterious goal, which it has met on some 
great, free expanse among the icy seas; but the true 
purpose of the voyage, the thing which keeps the 
ship stern and determined, and makes it safe not to 
be misled by the fascinations of the race, is the un- 
seen purpose of its voyage, the mysterious pole 
whose deeper fascination has drawn it out of its 
home-harbor and keeps it steadfast on its way until 
it finds its prize, or turns back before a hopeless 
obstacle, or goes down in the midst of storms it 
cannot weather. 

It is not only the persistence of life, it is also the 
purity of life, which is secured by service of the ab- 
solute. The eagerness which comes by rivalry not 
merely is unreliable and ready to give way, but 
while it lasts it is of poorer quality than the eager- 
ness which comes from a real desire for the essential 
natures of the things we see. The essential nature 
of things has its true and constant relations to the 
soul of man. The two are made to answer healthily 
to one another. Learning shines upon its hill-top, 
and the desire to know in the soul of man leaps up 
to greet it. Strength calls from the distance with 
its rugged voice, and the desire to be strong which 
is in man hears and answers to the call. The strug- 
gle and search which follow until the purpose is 
attained are legitimate and pure. There is no base 
admixture of low motive. But rivalry, the desire 
to outstrip our brethren, is always trembling on the 
brink of jealousy and spite. It is so easy to pull 
down the reputation which is a little too high for us 
to match ; it is so hard to be glad of the good thing 






THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 243 

which another man does, when it makes the less 
good thing which we are doing seem poor and in- 
significant. And even when the temptation to spite 
and jealousy is resisted, and the rivalry is absolutely 
generous and fair, and the victory is honorably ours, 
the whole side issue of comparison is an alloy and 
distraction to that pure desire for a noble thing 
which, quite apart from the attainment of the thing, 
is one of the noblest educations of a human life. 

There is yet another danger that comes from 
giving rivalry too large a place among our impulses. 
It lies in the temptation to limit our lives to those 
companionships in which we can easily be first, and 
so losing the broader fields of action in which we 
should get the greatest exercise and growth, even 
though we were constantly outstripped. " Better 
be first man in this small village than second man 
in Rome," we cry; and so we shut ourselves up in 
the village where we can be first, and all the great 
inspirations and delights and cultures of Rome are 
lost. How many men are doing this ! What multi- 
tudes of souls are spending their lives in playing 
children's games, because they know the petty cards 
and can easily beat in them, and letting the brave 
man's work which they ought to be doing, but in 
which they fear to be outstripped by other men, lie 
undone. How one wants to cry to them: "For 
shame! Go and meet men worthy of your man- 
hood. Go and match yourself with the best men 
you can find. Go and be beaten. It is better to 
be beaten in wrestling with the strongest than to 
win a thousand battles over adversaries just a little 



244 THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

weaker than yourself. By such defeats you grow 
strong. By such victories you grow ever feebler 
as you become more proud! " 

All that is good to say. It is good to bid men 
run races with feet swifter than their own. But 
is it not better still to beg them to make as little 
as possible of the race-running motive altogether? 
Do not think about outstripping each other; think 
of getting to the goal ! Let your whole soul be set 
on God, on getting to Him. Entering into Him, 
filling your life with His, then look round with joy 
at every progress which other souls are making 
towards that only satisfaction of a human life. Cul- 
tivate everywhere the habit of dealing directly with 
the absolute, and the merely relative and compara- 
tive ways of estimating life will come to be pro- 
foundly uninteresting to you. You will not care for 
much which now seems to you of vast importance. 
* 'He is the best athlete, the best lawyer, the best 
merchant, the best Christian in the town," — that 
will sound very tame and uninteresting to you. 
You will not care whether it is true or not when you 
have really seen the perfection of those attainments 
shine before you, and your soul is set on being the 
best athlete, the best lawyer, the best merchant, the 
best Christian that it is possible for you to be. Only 
in pursuit of the absolute comes freedom from the 
slavery of the relative, with its rivalries and com- 
parisons, with its close atmospheres and small satis- 
factions, and restlessness and jealousy and spite! 

I want to turn now to Jesus, and see how in the 
story which we have before us He dealt with this 



THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 245 

disposition of rivalry of which I have been speaking 
at such length, and which he found breaking out in 
His disciples. I cannot doubt that in general His 
way of dealing with it was that which I have been 
trying to describe. The whole great spirit of His 
Gospel was forever trying to draw men away from 
the slavery of the relative into the freedom of the 
absolute. He never encourages men to compare 
themselves with one another. He is always bidding 
them be perfect like their Father. He hardly ever 
says, "Outstrip one another/' He almost always 
says, " Come to me." 

And yet it would not be hard to quote passages 
in which Jesus recognized the power of comparison, 
and stimulated His disciples by bidding them see 
how their lives stood beside the lives of others of 
God's servants. He told them of John the Baptist 
that no man born of woman had surpassed him in 
true greatness. He warned the cities of the Lake 
of Gennesaret that the men of Nineveh had been 
more ready to hear the word of God than they. 

Jesus, then, does not ignore the power of com- 
parison. He does not ignore any of the powers 
which have their essence in the very constitution of 
humanity. That is His glory. He takes two powers 
and says of one: "This is the noblest. Do your 
work with this by all means, if you can." But He 
does not forbid the using of the lower power if only 
it be pure, and be kept in its true degree, and be 
used rightly. "This ought ye to have done, and 
not to leave the other undone. ,, 

But there is another thing which He does often, 



246 THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

and which it seems to me that He does here. He 
takes the lower power and makes it higher than it 
is often made, and rescues it from many of its 
dangers, by suggesting a higher method of its use. 

For powers are not invariable in their character. 
They vary with their uses. They grow finer when 
they are used on finer things. The power of thought 
grows subtle as it deals with subtle problems. The 
power of imagination becomes more radiant when it 
is picturing the possibilities of the celestial life 
than when it paints some base indulgence of the 
earthly nature. 

This is the principle which Christ applies to the 
power of rivalry. He sees His disciples in danger 
of using it for low purposes, and so of making it a 
low thing. They wanted to compete for tawdry 
reputation and position, — " which of them should 
be accounted the greatest ?" Such a use of it 
would make the power itself tawdry. Jesus says: 
"No! If you must use the power use it for a fine, 
unselfish thing, and so make it fine and unselfish.'* 
And then he tells them what that use shall be. 
"He that is greatest among you, let him be as the 
younger; and he that is chief as he that doth serve." 

How deep and wise and fine that is! Jesus says: 
"Must you then compete with one another? Must 
one be greater and the other less? Must you then 
use this power of competition? It might be better 
if you did not use it at all; but, if you must use it, 
make it as noble as you can by using it on noble 
things. Use it for human good. See not who 
shall be splendidest, but who shall be most useful. 



THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 247 

Let your rivalry be a rivalry in self-sacrifice and in 
laborious doing of good. Compete with one an- 
other in humility. See which can be the truest 
servant." 

As if one took a stream which had been running 
waste in low and muddy places, and with a strong 
hand collected it and shut it up into its channel and 
turned it to the fields which needed and could wel- 
come its fertility, so was it w T hen Christ took this 
wasted, dissipated power of rivalry and said to it : 
" Come here. Here is your true work. Do this 
noble work nobly, and it shall ennoble you ! " We 
can almost hear the stream laugh in its delight as 
it recognizes its true task. We can almost see the 
power lift itself to mightier proportions as it beholds 
the worthy work which it is called to do. 

Imagine the difference to the disciples when they 
once really grasped the new teaching of their Master. 
They might very likely have looked for a rebuke. 
They might have expected that their Master would 
have forbidden them to use this power of rivalry at 
all; but this is different. He says: "Use it, — but 
use it for higher and holier purposes. Use it not 
to surpass one another in honor and esteem, but 
use it to increase the amount of usefulness and 
brother-help/ ' How the sword which they were 
just grasping, of which they were ashamed, which 
they expected to see snatched out of their hands, 
must have flashed into a new and surprising splendor 
when they saw in the light of Christ's words to what 
noble uses it might be put! 

If they did what Christ bade them do, as in some 



248 THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

good degree they did, they must have been the sub- 
jects of a continually increasing surprise. The old 
power, transfigured by its new use, must have 
amazed them with its possibilities. Behold ! there 
could be rivalry without hate or grudge. Behold ! 
they could struggle to beat and yet rejoice to be 
beaten; for if they were beaten when they made 
their most earnest efforts to be useful, it merely 
meant that their brethren had more power of use- 
fulness than they, and so the thing for which they 
strove became more perfectly accomplished. 

I ask myself what would be the result if the same 
teaching of Jesus should be spoken to and should 
be accepted by all of this great world of competing 
men. Here are these eager hearts all eager to out- 
strip each other. Rivalry sparkles in every eye, 
and is the restless, almost frantic power which keeps 
all this life alive. Suppose some mighty power 
could take it all and make a change. Rivalry is not 
abolished, but the object of rivalry is altered. Not 
now, who shall be richest, or who shall be most 
powerful, or even who shall be most learned? — but 
who shall be most useful, who shall be most abso- 
lutely devoted to the good of fellow-man? — that is 
the question. The eagerness is kept just as intense. 
The city glistens and palpitates with the same active 
life. Each man upon the street watches his neigh- 
bor with the same keen vigilance. Only the purpose 
of it all is altered. It is a competition of benefi- 
cence. It is a rivalry of self-sacrificing service. All 
these men want to surpass each other by doing a 
little more good, by taking a little more of the bur 






THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 249 

den of life upon their shoulders, by relieving a little 
more of misery, by lifting a few more of the fallen 
out of the mire! 

You say it is impossible. You say it is a dream. 
I answer that I know nothing about that, and I do 
not think you know much more than I do. I think 
that more impossibilities are possible and more 
dreams are coming true than we have any idea of. 
But what I want you to observe is this, — that if 
such a great rivalry of unselfish service ever should 
come to pass, it would probably free itself almost 
entirely from those evils of which, as we have seen, 
our present rivalries stand in such danger. Tell me, 
can you imagine him whose only competition with 
his brother is, which shall drag the most men out of 
drunkenness — not which shall get the credit of sav- 
ing the most men, but which shall really save them 
— the whole impulse which creates the competition 
being the pity for the men's perdition, — can you 
imagine that man hindering his brother-worker from 
doing some act of salvation for fear that his brother- 
worker's list of rescued should exceed his own? Tell 
me, can you imagine the man, capable of entering 
into such a rivalry, deliberately drawing in his life 
and consorting only with the least useful people, so 
that he may not feel himself outstripped ? 

Such questions answer themselves. This nobler 
use to which the power has been put has in large 
degree robbed the power of its danger. It has pre- 
served its best and cast out its worst tendencies. It 
has kept all its energy and cast out all its narrow- 
ness. It has made man able to struggle with his 



250 THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

brother and to work all the harder because his 
brother is working by his side; and yet to rejoice 
in his brother's victory as if it were his own. Such 
transfiguration and purification come to a power 
when it is put to its highest use ! 

All this applies not merely to individuals but to 
those larger persons which, though they are made 
up of many beings, have still a personal existence 
of their own. It applies to the Christian Churches 
and their rivalries with one another. "Which of 
them should be accounted the greatest?" — how 
Christendom has rung, how our Christian country 
rings to-day with the old question ! There is not a 
village in the land where religion is not defamed 
and almost dying with the competition of rival 
churches. The country as a whole is distracted 
with the denominationalism which is simply at heart 
the wrestling of denomination with denomination, 
which of them shall be accounted the greatest. 
What hope is there of any peace? Good people 
dream of a Christian unity which shall swallow up 
denominational differences altogether. They pic- 
ture a day when some great triumphal assertion of 
some form or principle, perhaps, shall have merged 
all these contentions and competitions in one mil- 
lennial agreement on that principle or form. It is a 
case in which the wish is father to the thought. 
There is no sign which promises such a consumma- 
tion. It is not in the killing out of denominational- 
ism that the solution lies. The solution, at least 
the primary and immediate solution, lies in the turn- 
ing of denominational rivalry to the most sacred 



THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 25 1 

uses. Let the churches of the land stop trying to 
outstrip each other in the number of their adherents, 
in the abundance of their wealth, in the magnificence 
of their sanctuaries, in the stateliness of their ser- 
vice, and let each of them be honestly set to do all 
that it can — to do, if it can, more than its brethren 
for the attainment of truth, for the service of the 
poor, for the salvation of the bodies and the souls of 
men; and then what a change would come! Still 
there would be emulation, but it would be a holy 
emulation. It would be a strange, unworldly emula- 
tion, in which each party struggling to surpass the 
others would still lift up its voice in thankful joy 
when any of those others had surpassed its best 
efforts by supreme devotion or capacity. It would 
be an emulation in which each victor would honestly 
lament that those whom it had conquered could be 
conquered by such a feeble servant of the Master 
as it had felt itself to be! 

One almost sure result of such a noble rivalry 
would be that every church, devoted to the pro- 
foundest purposes for which any church exists, 
would speedily develop its own especial aptitude 
to meet those purposes. And so the several 
churches — all of which are partial, none of which is 
final or complete — would speedily find themselves 
working in different but parallel lines towards one 
great, broad result, which should freely take all 
their several successes into itself. In that way they 
would best come to know their real unity; to 
understand that neither of them is The Church 
of Christ, that The Church of Christ is the great 



252 THE RELATIVE AND THE ABSOLUTE 

aggregate of all of them together — and vastly 
more! 

But let us leave the churches, and come back to 
sum up in a few words all that we have said to-day 
about the principle of rivalry as it affects the lives 
of individuals. Does it not all come to these two 
exhortations which I press on you as I close? The 
first is this : As far as you can, get rid of emulation 
altogether. Live in the absolute, not in the rela- 
tive. Measure yourself not by the unstable stand- 
ard of your brother's life, but by the great, eternal, 
unchanging patterns of life which are kept in the 
treasury of God. And the second is this : So far as 
you must still keep rivalry among your impulses, 
let it be always rivalry for the deepest and truest 
things. Refuse to enter into the race except for a 
prize so great that it shall rob the race of all its evil 
power. Most of all, make the great object of your 
emulation helpfulness to all who need the help of 
fellow-man. 

He who is Christ's servant, and whom Christ has 
really brought into the presence and the love of 
God, must find both of these exhortations gradually 
fulfilling themselves in him. May Christ become so 
truly our Master that they may both be more and 
more fulfilled in us! 



XV. 
THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION. 

"And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he 
bowed himself with all his might ; and the house fell upon the lords, 
and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he 
slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life." — 
Judges xvi. 30. 

It is in many senses that the Bible is justly called 
the "Book of Life." No doubt that name belongs 
to it peculiarly because of the great revelation of 
the higher spiritual life, the life with God, the life 
in Christ, which fills its pages; but it would also 
describe the wonderful profusion and variety of 
vitality of every sort with which the sacred book 
abounds. Think over the Bible from beginning to 
end, and ask what other book so overruns with 
character? What other book so shows the endless 
diversity of human action? What kind of man is 
there that is not here? What human strength and 
weakness is assembled in this company ! Where is 
there such another Book of Life? 

For instance, think of two men, one from the Old 
Testament and one from the New, one the hero of 
the verse which I have read you for our text, the 
other the gentle disciple of the Lord — Samson and 

253 



254 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

St. John, the savage hero of Dan and the spiritual 
youth of Gallilee. How large must be the system 
of truth which can conceive of the relations which 
both of these men hold to God, which can see God 
using both of them for His purposes! How broad 
must be the stage on which these men have both 
their parts to play! One of them is the world's 
picture of saintliness and love ; the other is the per- 
fection of physical vitality. "As holy as St. John," 
we say, and "As strong as Samson* ' ; and the same 
Bible holds them both. The same God uses them 
both, and so shows, in the long history where they 
both have part, the completeness of humanity. It 
is no partial picture. The man who walks the Bible 
pages is the full man, body and soul together, and 
so the Bible is the Book of Life. 

I am led to speak this morning of the great cham- 
pion of Israel whose name has become through all 
times the proverb and synonym of physical strength. 
I should like to reach with you some of the mean- 
ings of his singular life. And first let me recall to 
you his history. It was a time of depression for 
Israel. The Philistines had conquered the Israel- 
ites, and they were subject to their savage neigh- 
bors. In the country of Dan, which bordered on 
the Philistine country, one day an angel came to 
a childless woman in a field and told her that she 
should have a son whom God would use for the de- 
liverance of His people from their enemies. The 
next day the visit and the promise were repeated, 
and then the woman's husband, whose name was 
Manoah, saw and heard the angel. He who gave 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 255 

the promise made the conditions. This child was 
to be made a Nazarite, set apart, that is, and con- 
secrated to the Lord. The symbols of his conse- 
cration were to be two : he was to taste no wine nor 
strong drink, and no razor was ever to touch his 
hair or beard. 

By and by the child was born, and he grew up to 
manhood, and he was very strong. It would seem 
as if there were periods of excessive strength which 
he recognized as given to him by God for a peculiar 
purpose. " The spirit of the Lord began to move 
him at times " — that is the description which is given 
of the strange phenomenon. Soon he began his 
attacks on the Philistines, and they all had a wild, 
grotesque, almost ludicrous character. He played 
with his enemies as a lion plays with its prey. His 
full, frolicsome life breaks out in all he does. He 
is a great, good-natured boy, passionate and excita- 
ble, but susceptible and impulsive, and apparently 
keeping no strong hatred even for the people whom 
it was the mission of his life to punish. He marries 
a Philistine woman, and at the wedding feast he 
provokes a quarrel with the guests about a foolish 
riddle, which led to his killing thirty of the men of 
Ashkelon and leaving his wife and her people in 
disgust. He comes back to find his wife given to 
another, and he revenges himself by the fantastic 
malice of turning three hundred foxes with fire- 
brands tied to their tails among the standing corn 
of the Philistines. He falls into their hands and as 
soon as they have bound him, " the spirit of the 
Lord came mightily upon him and the cords that 



256 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt 
with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands. 
And he found a new jaw-bone of an ass, and put 
forth his hand and took it, and slew a thousand men 
therewith. And Samson said, ' With the jaw-bone 
of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass 
have I slain a thousand men/ " It is the cry, the 
laugh, of an almost boyish triumph over the havoc 
he has made. 

And so the stream of his life flows on like a 
mountain-stream, falling from one cascade into an- 
other, until at last it sweeps into dark shadow. 
The catastrophe approaches. Once more he comes 
among the Philistines. In the city of Gaza he falls 
in love with a woman named Delilah, and after 
many times playfully deceiving her, he gives her at 
last the secret of his strength. He bids her cut 
the flowing locks which represented his consecration 
to Jehovah. When those were gone his strength 
was gone. The Philistines bound him and made 
him captive and blinded him. As his strength 
slowly returned they used him for their purposes. 
They bound him to a mill, and made him labor there 
like a beast. At last came the day of his revenge 
and his death together. He was brought out by his 
tormentors to show his strength at a great festival 
for their amusement. And there, when he had 
amused them for a time, he found his opportunity 
to seize the pillars of the house where the flower of 
Philistia were gathered for the pageant. "And 
Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And 
he bowed himself with all his might, and the house 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 257 

fell upon the lords and upon all the people that 
were therein, so the dead which he slew at his death 
were more than they which he slew in his life." 

Such is the story. It is a story which at once we 
feel belongs to the youth of any people. Long be- 
fore David and Isaiah comes this champion of phy- 
sical power, revelling in the strength of his right 
arm, doing all kinds of wild, fantastic things in the 
exuberant consciousness of being so strong. It has 
been often pointed out how like this story of the 
Hebrew Samson is to the Greek myths of Hercules 
and all his mighty labors. There is the same vast 
strength and the same weakness, the same yielding 
to the power of woman, the same captivity, the 
same open, free, fearless, passionate character. Per- 
haps the stories may have some connection with one 
another, or perhaps, what is more likely, they only 
indicate how back of all conceptions of power always 
lies this first, crudest, but most manifest and indis- 
putable sort of power, physical strength. It is the 
first thought of God which man receives. "The 
heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament 
showeth His handiwork/' " How strong He is! " is 
the thought that starts the fear or wonder of the 
soul which is just getting sight of God, and makes 
the beginning of its religion ; and whatever deeper 
things it learns concerning Him, whatever tidings 
of His love and wisdom may be brought to it, it 
never must lose the first thought of God's power. 
Any religion which loses that loses its masculine- 
ness, grows weak and feeble. The "fear of God" 

comes to mean something very much higher and 
17 



258 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

finer than the mere sense of His power. It comes 
to mean a deep and awestruck perception of all His 
perfect qualities, but it can never leave out its first 
meaning; it can never cease to mean the sense that 
He is strong, that He can do with our lives and the 
earth on which they swim through space whatever 
He shall choose to do. All other truths of what He 
will choose, of the wisdom and the love with which 
He will select, must be clustered and twined around 
this first truth of His power, that He can do what 
He will. 

And much the same is true of man. There, too, 
all higher culture makes us see that there are quali- 
ties higher than physical strength in man. In a 
certain sense civilization is always making physical 
strength of less and less importance. But no cul- 
ture, no civilization, can ever wholly do away with 
its significance. There is still an instinctive admira- 
tion for the strong man in our human nature. All 
young men will begin by holding it in honor, even 
though old men's philosophy proves that it is of 
little worth. It is the crudest sort of force, but it 
is the most manifest and the most immediately 
effective. Men are always coming back to it, and 
out of the most artificial standards of what is honor- 
able are always returning to the simplest of all tests 
and applauding the man who can strike the hardest 
blow, or lift the heaviest load, or march the longest 
journey. And if we told the truth, down at the 
bottom of all our hearts lies an envy and admiration, 
which perhaps we should be slow to own, but which 
no higher standards ever totally obliterate, for the 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 259 

man who is very strong. There come times which 
hear no music in the harp of David and are unstirred 
by all the aspirations of Isaiah, but Samson is never 
without his honor. 

As we think, then, of Samson's life, let us re- 
member it in its periods ; first in its strength, then 
in its fall, then in its disgrace, then in its second 
chance. 

1. Of Samson in his strength what I want you to 
notice is how God used him, with all his imperfec- 
tions, and his crudities, just as long as he was true 
to the consecration of his life. A wild, irregular, 
unaccountable creature, full of passion, running into 
sin, he still kept through it all the broad birth-con- 
secration of his life to God. Before he was born he 
was named a Nazarite. His unshorn locks were the 
witness of his consecration ; wherever he went and 
men saw them floating wildly like a banner, men 
knew that there went a man who, recklessly as he 
sometimes lived, terribly as he sometimes sinned, 
still knew and owned that he belonged to God, 
counted his strength a trust of God — not his, but 
God's, — and knew that he ought to use it not for 
himself but for the purposes of Him to whom it 
belonged. Such a man God could use. A wilful, 
wayward weapon he would often be in the Divine 
Hand, but wilful and wayward as he was, far as he 
was from being a perfect servant, still the confession 
of servantship was in his heart, the consecration to 
the Lord was always the under-fact of his existence 
to himself, and so God used him. 

And that is a perpetual truth. One man may be 



260 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

more wayward than another, the sort of force that 
men possess may differ vastly, may be in one man 
crude and coarse and in another fine; but, after all, 
the use which God is able to make of tw r o men in 
this world depends on the amount of the consecra- 
tion-consciousness that is in their lives and souls. 
One man is fine, clear, orderly, cultivated, finished, 
but it has never entered into his thought that he 
lives for any one beside himself. Another man is 
like Samson, wild and disorderly, passionate and 
boyish and frolicsome and wanton, but all the time, 
wrought into the very muscle of his strength, there 
is a tough, persistent consciousness that he belongs 
to God. Which does the work ? Samson may go 
blundering through it, doing it in bad taste, dis- 
honoring it very often, breaking as much glass as 
he saves, never seeming to realize how great the 
work is that he is doing, frolicking over it and 
never appearing to get hold of its best motives or 
meanings, but after all he does it. The Philistines 
fall before him. He believes that God sent him. 
But the other man, who has no dream of any con- 
secration, works out his fine conception, criticises 
and refines, and says what ought to be done, and 
does nothing. More and more clear it grows, I 
think, that it is the sense of consecration, however 
crude and rough be the characters in which it works, 
that God uses to change and save the world. 

2. And this makes clear the next point. If this 
was Samson's strength, then we can see where Sam- 
son's fall came from. He lost his consecration. It 
seemed a little thing. In a weak moment he let a 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 261 

wanton woman cut his seven-twisted locks of hair. 
But Samson was just the man to whom a symbol 
was everything. Those locks were so bound up 
with the vow that had been made before his birth, 
that they not merely stood for, they were his con- 
secration. When he revealed the secret that his 
strength lay in them, and really bade her cut them 
off, he knew that he was casting away that tie be- 
tween his life and God's which had given him all 
his power. 

Ah, men will talk of little things and great things 
as if they knew what things were little and what 
things were great. Men read this story and they 
say: "What a droll, fanciful old legend! As if the 
cutting of the hair could have had anything to do 
with the man's strength! " And so they read the 
third chapter of Genesis and shake their heads and 
say: "What! could the eating of an apple be the 
ruin of the world?" As if their own experiences 
had not been scattered through with events which 
ought to have explained to them how powerful and 
influential may be an act which seems insignificant. 
Have they never come up to a time when one single 
act, that seemed nothing to the men who watched 
it, meant for them either the acceptance or the re- 
jection of the mastery of God over their souls, and 
so had in it all the power of the endless blessing or 
the endless curse ? 

Why, we are always taking or refusing to take the 
apple, sacrificing or saving the locks of our conse- 
cration. There was one oath in your life that threw 
away your reverence, one lie that decided you would 



262 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

not be true, one cheat that petulantly cast off the 
restraining hand of God, one act of lust that gave 
your soul up to impurity, one drink that broke the 
consecration of your temperance. You cannot 
think of any act so little — the saying "Yes " instead 
of "No," the going up the street instead of down — 
that it may not be, when you do it, such a focal act 
as to assume most tragical importance. It may be 
the casting aside of the whole purpose of your life, 
the saying, " I will not have this man to rule over 
me," the giving up of God, the taking up of self, 
just what the act of Samson was when he told the 
secret of his locks. And if any act of ours be thus 
the sacrifice of the purpose and consecration of our 
lives, then for us as for Samson there comes weak- 
ness. Strength goes when purpose goes; and our 
unconsecrated powers may be bound with any cords 
that men may choose to bring. 

Is not this what the story of Samson's fall really 
means for us, — that if we sacrifice our consecration 
and our purpose all our strength is turned to feeble- 
ness? It is true even of our physique, I think. 
The very strength of the arm is weaker when the 
man has no faith in his cause and no passionate de- 
sire for its triumph. The soul's devotion passes 
into the muscles and prevails to conquer the foe or 
break open the dungeon door. "If ye have faith 
ye shall remove mountains " — those words of Jesus 
have almost a literal and physical truth. But it is 
truer of the other forms of strength, perhaps, than 
of the strength of the body, — at least one wants to 
dwell on it most concerning them. Of intellectual 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 263 

strength it is supremely true that it gives up its vigor 
when it loses its moral purpose. How many wit- 
nesses there are of that! How many ages full of 
ability and wit, but with no earnestness! How 
many men, living to-day, or dead and buried long 
ago in graves from which no inspiration rises, who 
had strength of mind, clear brains, vivid imagina- 
tions, scholarship, taste, and yet were very weak. 
They laid no hand upon their time, they exercised 
no influence on men. What was the reason? There 
can be only one. They had no moral purpose. 
They cared nothing for the good of man or the glory 
of God. They had given up their consecration. 

In days when every other element of strength is 
glorified, and that which completes them all and 
makes them really strong is so continually forgotten 
or despised, surely the story of Samson is good for 
us. It is not, I think, for the labor of science, 
which, however it may sometimes lose sight of the 
best truth, is laboring earnestly for the human 
good, — it is not for this that we ought to regret and 
fear to-day. It is for the vast amount of wholly 
purposeless literature, — the way in which so much 
of the best intellectual ability of this time is work- 
ing solely for self-satisfaction, — it is in the prevalent 
selfishness of culture that its greatest weakness lies; 
for there is no real strength in anything that is de- 
void of moral purpose. The book that is written, 
the state that is built, the life that is lived, without 
a consecration is weak, however brilliant it may be. 
It is Samson without the locks of his Nazarite 
dedication. 



264 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

O my dear friends, let us know — oh, that all 
the world might know, indeed — that everything, 
every triumphant work of genius, every assertion of 
dogma, every construction of system, ecclesiastical 
or social, is weak, weak and not strong, that is shorn 
of the crowning glory of moral purpose, that is not 
bent and bound and dedicated to the achievement 
of goodness. 

3. This, then, was Samson's fall. Think of him 
next in his disgrace and misery. It is a terrible 
sight. "The Philistines took him, and put out his 
eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and bound 
him with fetters of brass, and he did grind in the 
prison house/' That last clause has the sting of 
the story in it. Milton in his wonderful poem has 
drawn for us the same picture : 

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him 
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves, 

and when his father Manoah comes to him, he asks 

Wilt thou then serve the Philistines with that strength 
Which was expressly given thee to annoy them ? 

That is the true depth of his wretchedness. Not 
merely he has fallen out of his loyalty to God; he 
has fallen into the slavery of these brutal savages. 
Look at him where he toils ! — the mighty chest, the 
brawny arms, the limbs like columns, the muscles 
of twisted power all through the frame, the great 
form bent down upon the heavy mill-crank which 
he almost gnaws in his rage as he slowly heaves it 
around; and all about him, mocking him, goading 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 265 

him, these miserable Philistines who are his masters. 
Oh, if he could have left his strength behind him 
when he fell! oh, that, if he could not slay them, at 
least he might not serve them and give them the 
advantage of his God-given power! 

And if the bad man always could leave his 
strength behind him when he crossed the line into 
sin, if in proportion as he grows more wicked he 
grew more weak, his wickedness would not seem so 
terrible. That was David's ejaculation: "If I for- 
get thee, O Jerusalem, the City of Holiness, let my 
right hand forget its cunning! " It is the skill, the 
thought, the subtlety, the work that is laid out for 
wickedness, the cheat and burglar lavishing an in- 
genuity that was made to enrich the world, the 
deceiver arguing with a power, glowing with an 
enthusiastic genius that belong to truth; — these 
are our Samsons, at their miUs with slaves. Many 
a bad man in his better moments curses his skill in 
badness as Samson must have cursed his strength 
when the Philistines had it all. " Samson " means 
"the Sunny." The name belongs to the open, 
bright, breezy freshness of his better days; see him 
now as he grinds away, moody, blind, desperate, 
with his hands clutching the mill as if they would 
tear it. Yet that is something — something that he 
should hate himself and hate them as he toiled for 
them— something that he should grudge them the 
strength that belonged to God. It were a lower 
fall still, if he had come to consent to his slavery, to 
do the will of God's enemies and be happy, without 
a self-reproach. 



266 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

4. And so we come to what I called Samson's 
second chance. While he was toiling at the mill 
his hair was growing again, his consecration to God 
was renewed, and his strength became once more 
complete. Then came the Philistines' festival, the 
bringing out of the prisoner, his feats of strength, 
and at last he seizes the columns of the palace and 
drags it and the Philistines and himself down into 
death together. There is where the story ends. 
The champion is himself again, and once more he 
does the same service for God and God's people; 
he is the same ruin to God's enemies as at the be- 
ginning. "The dead which he slew at his death 
were more than they which he slew in his life." 
The consecration has come back into the strength, 
and once more he wins the fame and works the 
deliverance. 

Samson hath quit himself like Samson, and heroicly hath 

finished 
A life heroic, on his enemies 
Fvlly revenged, hath left them years of mourning. 

But see the difference. In this second chance he 
can conquer only at the price of his own destruction. 
Look at the youthful hero, rushing with a shout 
after his foes, clad in a strength which "made arms 
ridiculous," and then at this gray, rugged, silent 
man, bent down between the columns of the palace 
roof and tugging at their weight to drag them on 
himself as well as on his foes. No longer is there 
the radiant, sunny, easy, joyous, almost frolicsome, 
air of his first victories. That is all gone forever. 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 267 

Now, nothing but the heavy, desperate endeavor to 
die at work. 

Yes, God does give men a second chance; but 
the first chance never comes back to them. A 
wicked man turns from his wickedness. An old 
thief struggles back to honesty. The long accumu- 
lations of a godless life are cast aside. The wanderer 
comes home. The consecration is renewed. There 
is work. There is patience. There is even hope. 
But there is not, there cannot be, the exhilaration, 
the first swing of life which was there before the 
purity was stained, before the vow was broken. It 
is worth while — oh, how well worth while! — for the 
oldest and vilest to take the new chance that God 
gives him. It may be that even he in his chastened 
and subdued old age may not merely save himself 
but do good service for his Master; but let us not, 
in our glad thankfulness for the willingness with 
which God takes the wanderer back and gives him 
another chance, — let us not get to think that the 
wandering and the fall were anything else but bad. 
Let us not extenuate it or excuse. There are men 
now serving God in their old age, serving him nobly 
in their second chance, but still the first chance was 
the brightest, bright with a brightness that never 
comes again,— the daylight before they fell, before 
those blank, dark years of sin. Most shameful and 
most terrible, as one sees more of men, becomes 
that wretched proverb about the "wild oats" which 
fathers and mothers quote so lightly, which expects 
men to be bad before they can be good, which robs 
men of the bright and joyous first chance, and only 



268 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

hopes for them the dogged and desperate second 
chance of Samson. Let us hate it with all our 
hearts ! 

How shall I speak to this congregation, made up 
as it is of young and old? Here are young Samsons 
in the freshness of their purity and strength. Here 
are old Samsons toiling at the mill of sin. Oh, that 
I could preach to you the double truth — the first 
and second chance — and let neither weaken the 
other! If you are still believing — pure true, conse- 
crated to the Lord and to His high works, and there- 
fore strong, oh, keep that consecration! Let no 
promise that some day He will bring you back to 
Him tempt you to wander into wickedness. If you 
have already wandered, now come back ! It never 
is too late ! If only that you may die in His service, 
give up your sins, renew your consecration, and do 
what yet you can for Him before you die! 

This, then, was Samson's strength, and fall, and 
misery, and restoration. Out of the whole survey 
of him there comes one clear impression which the 
vividness of his personality is well adapted to con- 
vey. It is of the personal responsibility of the man. 
That is so evident all through ! This healthy hu- 
man creature illustrates splendidly the human mas- 
tery over circumstances and events. There is not a 
particle of feeble and unmanly whimpering about 
his fate. Philistines conquer him only when he 
yields and puts himself into their power. Once 
more to turn to Milton's poem. There is a passage 
there in which the Philistine harlot meets the hero 
whom she has ruined, and reproaches him that he 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 269 

should lay all the blame on her. It is a reproach 
which we can put into the mouth of the world, and 
fancy it rebuking the man who charges it with hav- 
ing through its allurements and temptations led him 
into sin. Delilah says : 

Was it not weakness also to make known, 
For importunity, that is for naught, 
Wherein consisted all thy strength and safety ? 
To what I did thou show'd'st me first the way, 

Ere I to thee, thou to thyself wast cruel. 

These words tell the whole story of the world's 
leading men into sin. We say: "If I had not met 
this companion I never should have been so frivo- 
lous or mean." "This sceptic made me sceptical. " 
"This failure made me bitter/ ' "These many dis- 
tractions drove my deeper thoughts away." "This 
badness made me bad/' And every one of them, all 
these bad things, and the world which altogether 
is made up of them, lifts up its voice and flings back 
our pusillanimous reproach: " 'Ere I to thee, thou 
to thyself wast cruel.' You betrayed yourself, or I 
never could have betrayed you." It will be the 
bursting forth of that voice from all the things, ani- 
mate and inanimate, which we have turned into ex- 
cuses of our sin, that will make up the Judgment 
Day. It anticipates the Judgment Day in time, 
when a man hears that voice now, and stops saying, 
"These things have ruined me," and begins to say 
frankly, "I have sinned." 

And now, let us come back a moment to where we 



270 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

began. I spoke at the beginning of this sermon 
about two strangely contrasted characters — Samson 
and St. John. They seemed to stand very far 
apart ; can we see anything which they have to do 
with one another? In other words, what has the 
Christian faith to do with Samson, the man of 
primitive human nature, strong in the first strength 
of man, and making that strength powerful as he 
used it in dedication to God? 

We answer, that Christianity, if it took this Old 
Testament giant in hand, certainly would not try to 
destroy or to restrain the fresh and breezy freedom 
of his life. Its joyousness and spirit she would try 
to keep. Its simplicity and humor she would love. 
Its childishness she would undertake to educate, 
but its childlikeness she would treasure and exalt. 

To make Samson a Christian! In our modern 
ears, with our modern associations, that sounds 
ridiculous. It makes us laugh to think of taking 
this boisterous young savage, and teaching him our 
doctrines, and bringing him to our meetings, and 
making him talk our religious talk ; for that is what 
we often understand by being a Christian nowadays. 
But Christ could have made a Christian out of him, 
and it is easy to see how. Keeping his strength, 
that strength which, as we saw, depended wholly on 
his consecration to God, Christ could have made his 
consecration to God perfect. First, He could have 
shown him God as that poor bewildered boy of 
Dan never saw Him. Instead of that dim Jehovah 
after whom his dull imagination reached, He could 
have set before him the love and richness and per- 



THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 27 1 

fection of Divinity in His own perfect life. And 
then, having shown him God, He could have 
bound him to God by personal love for Himself. 
Imagine this brave young soul in all its freshness, 
perfectly seeing God and perfectly bound to Him 
by love, seeing Him and devoted to Him in Jesus. 
How strong his consecration then ! What tempter 
could have overcome it? How brave his onset! 
What foe could have withstood it? Where shall 
we find the picture of what it would have brought 
him to, except in that Christ Himself, who, stronger 
than Samson, had in Himself perfectly what Samson 
had so imperfectly? Jesus is the Samson of the di- 
vine life — strength filled with consecration. His 
strength was perfect because His consecration was 
perfect. "Verily, verily, I say unto you," He said, 
"the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He 
seeth the Father do." That which He was, He 
would have more and more made His servant; not 
robbing him of one glorious flower of his strength 
and freedom, but making all his strength pure and 
permanent by filling it with God through the chan- 
nel of consecration to Himself. 

The Christian Samson, then, is simply the man in 
whom Christ does this work to-day. Fighting and 
conquering the enemies of God, joyful and radiant 
with present pleasure and perpetual hope ; springing 
up with a sleepless fountain of vitality; so free that 
nobody can bind him from doing what he knows is 
right and thinking what he thinks is true; so strong 
that no wickedness can stand before him or in him; 
happy and busy, and making happiness and work 



272 THE STRENGTH OF CONSECRATION 

about him as the sun makes light ; — but all this only 
because he is perpetually and completely conse- 
crated to God in love and service of Jesus Christ. 
To him there can come no blindness. No man can 
make him a slave, or chain him down to any work of 
sin. He is strong in the Lord and in the power of 
His might ; and he goes from strength to strength 
until at length in Zion he stands in perfect love and 
consecration, and so in perfect power for his eternal 
work, before God. 






XVI. 
THE DANGER OF SUCCESS. 

44 Verily I say unto you, They have their reward/' — MATTHEW 
vi. 2. 

The soul of Jesus was stirred within Him as He 
went about the streets of Jerusalem and saw the 
multitude of hypocrites who passed there for pious 
men. He saw the Pharisees standing in the syna- 
gogues and in the streets, distributing their charity. 
They came in with a crowd and a noise. They 
stood upon the highest platform. They were sur- 
rounded by their fawning sycophants. They in- 
suited every poor man with their arrogance before 
they helped him. They made every coin sound as 
they dropped it and tinkle the praises of their gen- 
erosity, so that all the synagogue or all the street 
could hear. There are such public and ostentatious 
almsgivers in the East to-day doing the same thing 
in almost precisely the same way. And here, where 
we live, in the West, where this particular way of 
doing it would be ridiculous, there are plenty of 
people doing the same thing after an Occidental in- 
stead of an Oriental manner, "doing their alms be- 
fore men, to be seen of them." These are the men 
that Jesus looked upon, and the comment that He 

18 

273 



274 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

made upon them is well worth our study. He saw 
them doing a certain act with a certain object. The 
act and the object for which they did it were ex- 
actly suited to one another. The act was unspirit- 
ual and selfish, and the object was unspiritual and 
selfish, too. The charity they gave was cold and 
formal and unfeeling, and the praise that they ex- 
pected for their charity was the cold, formal adula- 
tion of men whom they had convinced of their 
importance. In their charity there was no deep 
yearning after God and the children of God ; and in 
the applause that they expected they found a per- 
fect satisfaction. They never dreamed of creeping 
by their charity a little nearer to God, and entering 
by sympathetic action a little deeper into His heart 
and mind, which is what the really devout soul is 
always longing for. 

And so Jesus, looking at the meagre nature of 
their charity and seeing how it just matched the 
superficial applause which it excited, said: "Yes, 
verily, I say unto you they have their reward." 
They get what they are after. They get no more. 
They have their reward. There is no more to come, 
no great, unrealized future fruitage of their action 
into which they shall enter one of these days. It 
is all there. Those clapping hands, those praising 
voices are all. They have their reward, and it is 
over. But yet they do certainly have it. Such as 
it is, they do not miss it. In their own little region 
their actions are certainly successful. Nay — for, as 
Jesus speaks, we feel as if His words were certainly 
telling the story of condemnation, — they are sue- 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 275 

cessful, and it is that very success that ruins 
them. 

They are certainly deep words — these words of 
Christ. They are not such words as many of us 
would speak, for He did not see with eyes like ours. 
His words touch and start a distinction which is al- 
ways appearing in the different treatments of the 
low and selfish lives of low and selfish men. You 
see a man doing a selfish thing, or living a selfish 
life. He is working for a low and little purpose; 
what shall you say to him to turn him? You may 
tell him that he will fail in what he seeks; that, 
struggle as he will, he never will be rich ; that, seek 
to be prominent as he will, he never will make men 
look at him ; that, desire and work for peace and 
comfortableness as he will, very few men attain 
what he is working for, and it is not likely that he 
will attain it. You try to scare him off with the 
prophecy of failure. That does not do much good. 
Your friend knows that while his success is not ab- 
solutely certain, still he is in the direction of suc- 
ceeding. Corrupt men do get rich and powerful, he 
knows, and hypocrites do pass for saints, and men 
who aspire for popularity do get it by their arts. 
He will not ignore facts. A few exceptions here and 
there will not make him believe that on the whole 
men do not get what they are struggling for, and so 
he plunges on all the more eagerly for your warning. 

But now, suppose you take just the other tone. 

Suppose you say to him, not "You will fail/' but 

Probably you will succeed. * ' That was what Jesus 

said: "Verily, they have their reward.' ' The low 



276 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

ambition gets what it desires. The cheat does get 
the fortune. The demagogue gets the popularity. 
The hypocrite gets the name of piety, and the flip- 
pant sneerer gets the name of wit. You say to your 
friend: "If you go on, you will succeed. You will 
get the reward that properly belongs to the life you 
have chosen. But look at that reward and see what 
it is worth. See whether, painting it at its very 
brightest as you will, it is indeed worthy of your 
seeking. See whether such a success is not really a 
dreadful thing for a man to come to and be satisfied 
with, when there are in him powers of such a differ- 
ent sort that might bring him to such a different 
issue. Is it not in the rewards to which they come 
that the real hollowness and wretchedness of the 
things that you are doing show themselves out 
most manifestly ?" 

Now surely this is the truest ground to take. It 
looks the facts most truly in the face. I do not be- 
lieve that you will ever make the drunkard leave off 
drink by telling him that drink does not exhilarate, 
nor even by pointing him to the headaches that fol- 
low when the exhilaration is all over; but only by 
showing him what a poor, low thing that kind of 
exhilaration is, — of how much better a man like him 
is capable. Point him to the crowd of rollicking in- 
ebriates, happy up to the very height of their de- 
sires, in the complete enjoyment of that for which 
they have given up clearness of brain, and tender- 
ness of heart, and the joys of pure friendship, and 
the respect of men ; point him to them in the full 
glory of their success and say : " * Verily, they have 






THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 277 

their reward/ — what do you think of it?" I do not 
believe you will ever rescue a man from the unrea- 
sonable slavery of business by telling him of the 
chances of his not succeeding, but rather by taking 
him and showing him what success amounts to. 
Show him the man who, by the mere business 
standard, has perfectly succeeded. Show him a life 
all given up to trade, and now travelling down to- 
wards the grave with hands burdened with a fortune 
that it cannot use. Show him the stunted nature; 
show him the table spread with food that the sick 
man cannot taste, the library crowded with books 
that the uncultured man cannot use, the free admis- 
sion won at last into a society that the mere busi- 
ness machine cannot enjoy. Show him success. 
Show him the rich man, whose life has been given 
up to getting his riches, at last in full possession of 
all he has been struggling for; and then, with the 
gorgeous picture glowing full before his eyes, ask 
him: "Is that, then, what you want? Does that 
then, satisfy you? Verily, he has his reward, — is 
that the reward you want? " And many a time, he 
who would have braved defiantly every threat of 
failure, will feel the scales fall from his eyes and 
turn away disgusted as he looks at the poor, drudg- 
ing mortal cursed by his complete success. 

I should like to speak to-day about the danger of 
success. We hear a great deal about the danger of 
failure, and yet there are many things in which it is 
much more dangerous to succeed than it would be 
to fail. So many men have been ruined by suc- 
ceeding in what they undertook, who might have 



278 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

been saved by failing. Let us look at it, and see 
what are some of the most prominent of the dangers 
of success. 

And perhaps I can show it by certain illustrations, 
by citing certain common cases. Take a man who 
goes into public life. His object is to win public 
applause and so to win power. He has looked no 
higher than that. He has never aspired to true ser- 
vantship of the people, nor to a real incorporation of 
the great principles of government into the life of 
the people he is set to rule. There is nothing either 
of the philanthropist or of the philosopher about his 
politics. Well, by-and-by, he succeeds. The peo- 
ple begin to praise him. He comes up to higher 
and higher office, and he wins little by little the 
power that he wants. To keep that power and to 
use it then becomes the business of his life. He 
looks no higher. He values no other sort of attain- 
ment. He has done his best, and has succeeded. 
What shall we say about him? If he were a friend 
of yours and if you had been watching him and 
really desiring his best good, and if you really saw 
how poor that prize was which, if he should reach 
it, would almost certainly have cut off all chance of 
spiritual growth and progress into higher ambitions 
from him forever, would you not rather have seen 
him fail than succeed? Would not failure, perhaps, 
have cast him back and, even if from mere disgust 
at first, still have compelled him to cast aside the 
unsuccess of policy and perhaps to have taken up 
with principle? Certainly, there have been public 
men enough who have seemed to learn what princi- 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 279 

pie was for the first time only when all their plans 
of self-advancement had come to woeful failure. 
And there have been plenty of public men who 
seemed to say good-by to principle and pure am- 
bitions the moment that their public life, after long 
disaster, graduated from failure into success. 

Or take the success of many a merchant. In a 
mercantile community like ours this must be what 
oftenest forces itself upon our notice. In every oc- 
cupation there are certain special faculties em- 
ployed. To seem to have those faculties supremely 
is the pride of him who is ambitious in that special 
occupation. To seem to be supremely shrewd and 
practical, to seem to be sharp, smart, quick at the 
turn of a bargain, able to make money and able to 
keep it,— -this is the whole ambition of many a busi- 
ness man. This is what multitudes of clerks are 
striving for in emulation of their principals. When 
they have reached this, they will seem to themselves 
to have reached the purpose of their life. But when 
we see what such a success makes out of many men, 
how it hardens them with selfishness and narrows 
them with pride; when we see how many young 
men who started full of various generous desires, 
aspiring after self-culture, dreaming of knowledge, 
craving usefulness, sensitive to religion, gentle with 
reverence, are swept by their mere business success 
into the close and confined career of the man who 
has no desire but for money, — as a wide river that lay 
open to the sunlight and lavished its fruitfulness on 
broad banks and on the shores of happy islands, is by- 
and-by all crowded and cramped in between narrow 



280 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

granite walls, where it foams and frets and rages 
and is hurried on like a whipped slave, — when we see 
this (and it is what our great business cities are full 
of) are we not ready to cry of many a man : ''Oh, if 
he had only failed and not succeeded ! " Are we not 
ready to pray for a friend, whose best good we de- 
sire, that he may not succeed too much? Do we 
not feel the danger of success? 

But I want to apply the same idea in a higher field 
— in the field of religion. What I have just been 
saying all will agree to ; what I would say about re- 
ligion is no less true, though perhaps not so clear. 
Can there be a danger of too much success in re- 
ligion? Is it possible that there can be peril to a man 
from being too easily prosperous in the religious life? 

Let us remember what religion is, what its great 
\$y) purpose is. The purpose of religion is to bring the 
V human soul to God. The soul religiously successful 
is the soul that really has come to God, and laid it- 
self on Him in perfect love and absolute obedience. 
Of that success there cannot be too much. To all 
eternity the soul of man redeemed shall always be 
coming nearer to, deeper and deeper into the soul of 
God. But that final and complete attainment is 
reached through other attainments ; and one of these 
subordinate attainments is the clear and certain hold- 
ing of doctrinal truth. It is a subordinate attain- 
ment ; not to know truth but to come to God is the 
ultimate glory of religious life. And now, if it is 
sometimes the case that the easy and comfortable 
acceptance of truth, the ready belief of these great 
verities of Christianity, hinders instead of helps the 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 28 1 

soul in its approach to God; then, even here, there 
is an instance of the danger of success that is most 
striking and that we ought to understand. It is not 
easy to state. I think — at least I hope — that I have 
made it clear to you often enough that I have no 
sympathy with nor tolerance for the disbelief that 
disbelieves for the mere pride of disbelieving. God 
forbid that I should ever lead any soul to think that 
the simplicity and directness of its faith was a sign 
that its faith was superficial or insincere. Let me 
never seem to teach that doubt in itself is better 
than belief as such. But while I say this strongly, 
none the less I am sure that there is a certain doubt 
that is better than a certain belief. There is a be- 
lief that is traditional, easy because it never asks a 
question, placid because it is so shallow, and that, 
calm as it looks, is not so good as the tumult of 
eagerness, which, making religion a thing of life or 
death, will not be satisfied till it has had an answer 
to a hundred questions, to know the answers to 
some of which a man must verily be God Himself. 

And now, if a man makes it the object of his 
Christianity not to come near to God, but merely to 
establish himself in a certain set of doctrines ; and if 
in time he reaches his desire and stands with his 
creed all compact and formulated, each part fitted 
into its neighbor part so that, whatever happens, no 
shock ever comes to the structure of his well-jointed 
faith, — what shall we say of him? What can we say 
but just what Jesus said? "Verily, he has his re- 
ward." He has built up his faith, and he keeps 
it so abstract, so apart from these terrible live 



282 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

problems that are rampant in the world, that it never 
feels their disturbing influence. While other men 
are shaking with bewilderment, while David is per- 
plexed and troubled at the dreadful mysteries of 
Providence, while Paul is wondering at God's treat- 
ment of him, this man's faith stands apart and un- 
shaken. He looks with pity or contempt on every 
doubter. He lives a more comfortable mental life 
than they do, but he does not accomplish so com- 
pletely the real purpose of all religion — he does not 
come so near to God. He has his reward in careless 
days and peaceful nights. But it is not good for 
him. Some time or other God blesses him if He lets 
a great sorrow or a great bewilderment plow down 
through his easy faith, and turn it up in great fur- 
rows to the very core. 

And what is true about faith is true also about 
peacefulness. That, too, is dangerous if it is not 
pure and thorough and profound. A man accepts 
some superficial and mechanical notion of Christi- 
anity. He learns to think that his soul is in danger; 
by which he does not mean that his best powers are 
in danger of degradation and that his spiritual vital- 
ity — his love and truth — is dying away from him. 
He means that he has been wicked, and God is go- 
ing to punish him with suffering. To get rid of that 
suffering is his one desire. And by and by he con- 
vinces himself that, by some one thing that he has 
done, that suffering is got rid of, that God has let 
him go out of His revengeful hands and he is free. 
The moment of his freedom he may describe differ- 
ently. It may be the moment when he felt a certain 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 283 

inside emotion ; it may be the moment when he sub- 
mitted to a certain outside sacrament ; but the pe- 
culiarity of all such thoughts of Christianity is this, 
— that they put the whole work at one special mo- 
ment and, that once past, the soul released from the 
threatened penalty, thenceforth the whole is done, 
the man is among the elect, among the saved, the 
chosen, and he has nothing to do but be at peace 
and rejoice in his already perfected salvation. The 
soul convinced of this settles into the consciousness 
of its own happiness and easily grows pharisaical as 
it looks at the poor, troubled spirits which have not 
reached the rest it has attained. 

What is there that shall disturb it? Salvation, 
for it, means the escape from everlasting punish- 
ment ; and the warrant of that escape it holds firmly, 
written in the red blood of Christ. What shall it 
seek for more? For it, no daily struggle to grow 
near to Christ, no daily sense of how far off from 
Christ the soul is living, keeps the whole nature in 
disturbance. No fight with sin, no dissatisfaction 
with itself, no half-despairing sense of its own feeble- 
ness ever coming up into sight, no impatience after 
the Christ who as the soul approaches Him seems to 
loom up all the more forbidding as He is the more 
tempting in His purity, — none of all this ever dis- 
turbs with a ripple nor darkens with a cloud the per- 
fect peacefulness of the soul which, with its purely 
mechanical conception of religion, thinks itself safe, 
and with its cushions and its comforts travels along 
to its assured and entirely unawful heaven. God 
forbid that I should depreciate or deny the 



284 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

Christian's peace in Christ, but this is something 
wholly different from that. That is a peace consistent 
with eagerness, anxiety, and toil. 4< Woe unto them 
that are at ease in Zion! " The man who gives up 
seeking to be like God, and makes his religious satis- 
faction to consist in the assurance that he is not go- 
ing to be punished in the other world, gets what he 
seeks. He attains a comfortable peacefulness. He 
has his reward ; but it would be better for him if he 
never had it, for that very peacefulness and satisfac- 
tion keep him away from God. 

And the same thing is true of Christian influence. 
We all know that we ought to do good to one an- 
other, that what the Lord has given us was not 
given us for ourselves alone, but for our brethren 
too. And there are powerful and effective ministries 
which, as we look about, we all know that we can 
render to some one or some number of people by 
our side. But the best ministry, the real ministry 
of one soul to another is always of a laborious and 
quiet sort. It requires studious sympathy. It must 
draw near to the nature that it wants to help, in pa- 
tient, silent ways. Very often it must sacrifice the 
favor of its object, and even provoke his enmity, 
that it may deal frankly with him and do him good. 
All this is laborious and makes no noise, and so it is 
no wonder that a more prominent and easier type of 
work for fellow-men, an external and unsympa- 
thetic lecturing of men's sins, takes the place of this 
unseen, painful work which goes on so toilsomely, 
so silently, between soul and soul. 

Oh, it does almost anger one sometimes, when 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 285 

one is in his weakest moods, most capable of being 
angered, to see who are the most recognized laborers 
for fellow-men, the helpers of their brethren whom 
all men praise. The cheap satirist of social vices, 
who never goes down to their bottom to cure the 
social discontents out of which they spring; the pro- 
fessional philanthropist, the preacher or the lecturer 
who only abuses his fellow-men and never tries to 
understand them; the busy-body giver of advice 
who flutters here and there like a stupid gardener 
through his garden, pulling up all the flowers that 
will not grow just his way; — all these are the men 
whom people praise and say, "See how much good 
they do!' ' 

But where is the good really doing? Not where 
men see it or praise it at all. There is a great up- 
ward movement of humanity, the better part lifting 
the worse part always, but it is as silent a process as 
when the hidden leaven creeps through the heavy 
loaf, or when the subtle springtime pervades the 
sluggish earth. Wherever any soul, without the 
slightest pharisaism, is just infusing its noblest 
power by sympathy into some brother soul — father 
helping child and, quite as often, child helping 
father; teacher entering into the life of scholar, em- 
ployer touching his clerks' temptations with the 
strength of his maturer life ; and friendship every- 
where creating the atmosphere of life which makes 
unconsciously the moral strength of one to be the 
moral strength of many ; — in all such cases the real 
help of man by man, the real influence of man over 
man, is at work. While more and more suspicious, 



286 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

certainly, seem the loud professions of those who 
claim to be the helpers of their fellow-men, more 
and more beautiful and precious seem to me the un- 
conscious ministries by which earnest and loving 
souls win other souls, and never know the blessed 
work they do. The first win their brethren's ap- 
plause; the others win their brethren's souls, and 
that is better. The first win applause, and they have 
their reward ; but if success is dangerous anywhere, 
it is never so dangerous as when men succeed in 
making other men believe that they are self-sacrifi- 
cing and devoted, because the risk is so great that 
they will rest in their fellow-men's fond gratitude, 
and never do the hard, unnoticed work by which 
alone men do really come close to and give real aid 
to one another. 

So we might go on with many illustrations. The 
fact which all of them illustrate seems only too plain. 
Is it not this? I beg you to notice it, remember it, 
see if it is not true — that every work which it is 
right for man to do has its legitimate and true result, 
hard to attain, and more manifest to God than to 
men when it is attained ; and that these perfect re- 
sults of things have always certain copies or imita- 
tions or counterfeits which look like them, which 
are easy to reach and which attract men's attention; 
that the counterfeit result is always trying to slip 
itself into the place of the real result, and, further- 
more, that a success in the attainment of the coun- 
terfeit is dangerously apt to delude men and distract 
them, and turn them off from the reality they ought 
to be pursuing. 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 287 

I do not know the occupation to which this will 
not apply, in which the true ambition is not always 
haunted by a false ambition that is always trying to 
slip into its place. The merchant's service to the 
community and his own self-interest — the politi- 
cian's public spirit and his ambition — the school 
teacher's desire to teach his scholars and his desire 
to make them shine — the minister's wish to save 
souls and his wish to be popular — the lawyer's love 
for justice and his love for technicalities— the 
church-member's love for men's souls and his pride 
in the growth of his denomination — the Christian's 
longing for truth and God and his satisfaction in a 
creed and in safety, — everywhere the sham besets 
the reality, the counterfeit lurks close beside the 
genuine and tries to make men accept it in her place. 
If men do take it they get their reward, but the 
temporary peace or pleasure that they gain is paid 
for by the loss of fuller culture and the final joy 
which only the real and perfect things can give. Oh, 
for more thoroughness, no matter what it costs ! for 
more determination to be satisfied with nothing but 
the highest and the best ! 

It would seem as if this subject of ours was closely 
bound up with the most fundamental things — with 
the largeness of life, and the limitation and sin of 
man which make it impossible for him to compre- 
hend it all. In a perfect world, inhabited by perfect 
and sufficient men, every good act would have four 
facts manifestly and necessarily belonging to it. In 
the first place, it would be good, — there would be its 
own inherent and essential righteousness. In the 



288 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

second place, it would do good to a world all ready 
to receive it, — there would be its immediate useful- 
ness. In the third place, it would give pleasure to 
the pure nature out of which it sprang, — there would 
be a spontaneous and genuine pleasure. And, 
fourthly, it would win applause from all men, since 
all would instinctively recognize it, — there would be 
its easy and ungrudged popularity. Righteousness, 
usefulness, pleasure, popularity, — all these belong to 
the perfect action done in the perfect world ; all 
these shall come to it in the world that shall be per- 
fect. In heaven every good act shall have not merely 
its own essential excellence, but it shall leap at once 
into some blessed influence, it shall fill with unmixed 
joy the soul of him who does it, and all the multi- 
tudes of the New Jerusalem shall see its beauty in- 
stantly and praise it with hearts incapable of envy 
or detraction. 

But now, in this imperfect world, with these im- 
perfect men, how is it? Where is the act that wins 
all these deserts of goodness? Where is the act 
that is righteous and useful and delightful and pop- 
ular all at once? Once in a lifetime there may 
come such a golden act, but how few they are ! The 
experience of any noble life seems to be very largely 
occupied in cutting off and giving up the inferior 
and more accidental characteristics of goodness in 
order that its more, precious and essential ones may 
be maintained. We begin at the bottom of our list. 
My righteous act ought to win men's praise, but let 
me surrender their praise without a murmur if only 
my own soul finds joy in doing what is right. But 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 289 

even that may have to go. I ought to enjoy doing 
righteousness, but if there is a righteous thing that 
will help my brother at my side, let me do it, though 
I get no pleasure from it, though I dread and hate 
it. And even that usefulness may have to go. Not 
even to help my fellow-man, dear and sacred as that 
duty is, not even to help him must I do anything 
that is not righteous in itself. 

My dear friends, may we not describe the differ- 
ence in men's lives simply by saying that it depends 
on whether they begin at the top or bottom of that 
scale in their choice of actions? One man begins at 
the top and runs down : Righteousness, if it is con- 
venient; usefulness, if it comes in my way; pleas- 
ure, if I can arrange it; but popularity anyhow! 
Another man begins at the bottom and runs up: 
Applause, if men choose to give it to me ; pleasure, 
if God bestows that privilege; usefulness, if I may 
have so great and sweet a boon ; but righteousness 
certainly, though everything else must go with one 
sweep to attain it. 

Which class do we belong to? As we look at the 
life of lives, the life of Jesus, there can be no doubt 
about Him. He trod popularity under his feet. He 
let pleasure go, and lived a life of pain. He would 
not, even to help men, go out of the way of right- 
eousness. Nothing could weigh with Him against 
the necessity that He should do His Father's Will. 
Do you think He did not care for all the others? 
Was not the praise of brother-man sweet to His in- 
tense and genuine humanity? Did not that perfect 

nature delight in the pleasures that humanity was 

19 



29O THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

made to feel? Let us never picture to ourselves the 
Lord as an unsensitive, hard man, to whom it cost 
nothing to give up the things that other men yield 
to and that occupy their lives. He felt every sur- 
render as we do not know how to feel it, but He 
turned away to do that Will which He had come to 
do, that Will which was to Him the one precious, 
absolute thing in the universe; and as He looked 
back on His brethren seeking their pleasure, winning 
one another's praise, it was with a keen appreciation 
of the lower success which He had sacrificed to reach 
the higher, with a clear sense of its value, though 
without a shade of regret at its loss, that He said, 
"Yes, verily, they have their reward." It was as 
if the man who had climbed a snowy peak stood 
cold and tired in the midst of all the glory on the 
very top, and looked down into the valley and 
thought how warm and comfortable were the peas- 
ants by their firesides, and was never so thankful as 
just then that he had not been content to tarry by 
the fireside, but had struggled through every diffi- 
culty to the top. 

How the very thought of Jesus gives us the true 
spirit in which everything that duty calls us to sur- 
render ought to be given up ! It is not good for any 
man to give up any success for the sake of a higher 
success, and yet to go about grudging that success 
which he has surrendered to the men who are still 
satisfied with it. You give up riches in order to be 
honest and do good ; thenceforth the joy of doing 
good ought to be so great to you that no shadow of 
envy should sweep over your face as the carriages of 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 29I 

the rich men spatter you upon the street. You 
choose the happiness of sobriety ; thenceforth it is 
not worthy of you to feel vexed at the temporary 
exhilaration which the carousing drunkards get out 
of their dissipation. You deliberately make your 
religion a serious and thoughtful thing; you deter- 
mine not to be satisfied with the mere surface of it ; 
you open its deep, puzzling questions and you let in 
upon your soul many a puzzling and bewildering 
doubt : — it may be you are doing well, but at any 
rate do not complain of the price you pay for the 
more intelligent faith that you are seeking. Do 
not complain that you have not the smooth and 
careless life of the traditional, undoubting believer 
who never asks a question and so has none to an- 
swer. It is a beautiful satisfaction in the highest 
success which can look the brilliancy of the lower 
successes in the face, and say, without a shade of 
grudge or bitterness, ' * Yes, they have their reward, 
— say it without conceited superiority and without 
feeble envy. 

This seems to me important. I think I see so 
many Christians, men who have chosen Christ, who 
are not deeply, thoroughly satisfied with the Christ 
whom they have chosen. They have really chosen 
Him. They know there is a happiness in Him that 
wickedness cannot give, but this happiness lies so 
deep ! They know that it is there, but they have 
not uncovered it yet — not all of it. They see some 
fragments of it, and they know that the rest is there. 
But here lies the happiness of wickedness — all plain 
and open. It sparkles in the sunshine. Its laughter 



292 THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 

rings out on the air. I think that there are a 
great many good people who wish that wicked peo- 
ple did not seem so happy. It puzzles them. They 
know that they are happier, but somehow their hap- 
piness is not so palpable. It lies far off. It lies 
deep down. The eating and drinking and merri- 
ment bewilder and amaze the patient toiler after 
righteousness, who has given up everything else that 
he may win Christ. He is not able all at once to 
measure their success and see its value, and say un- 
grudgingly and pityingly : " Yes, that is the joy that 
belongs to that kind of life — the joy that I put be- 
hind me once for all when I chose Christ. They 
have their reward. Let me press forward, and every 
day a little more and more have mine." 

What shall such a half-discontented Christian do? 
He does not dream of turning back and giving up 
his Master. He is only bewildered. All he must 
do is to stand firm. In ever new obedience let him 
give his Master ever new opportunity to show him 
the deeper and deeper richness of His love. As he 
goes on, as he learns more of Christ, as he sees more 
of what it is to serve Him, he will leave all these 
half-regrets behind him. It will no more trouble 
him that lower ambitions find their lower rewards, 
than it seems an injustice to the strong man, toiling 
in the delight of health and self-dependence for his 
daily bread, that his little dog frisks by his side, or 
sleeps in the sunshine and does no work. It is the 
satisfaction of the soul in Christ that makes the in- 
justices of this world seem all right and clear. We 
shall have it perfectly when we get to heaven, and 



THE DANGER OF SUCCESS 293 

we might have far more of it than we do have 
now. 

The danger of every success except the highest! 
Let us be afraid of every prosperity and rest that 
our souls find, except that which they find in right- 
eousness and Christ. And when they come there, 
and are found in Him, then let them be satisfied ; 
for all things are theirs when once they are wholly 
Christ's. 



XVII. 
THE SPIRITUAL MAN. 

" But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is 
judged of no man." — i Corinthians ii. 15. 

St. Paul is always aware of two kinds of men : 
one of them he calls the natural man and the other 
the spiritual man. He sees them living together in 
every group, in every family, in every church ; and 
the general aspect of the world becomes to him most 
interesting because these two kinds of men are 
always mingled in it. 

Indeed, the mingling of the natural and spiritual 
men in the world seems quite as universal and fun- 
damental a fact as the mingling of the higher and 
lower elements in nature. The two in some degree 
correspond and illustrate each other. In nature 
there is a constant penetration of the grosser and 
coarser by the subtler and finer parts. The grosser 
portion presents itself immediately to our sight ; the 
subtler part eludes us, and only gradually do we 
find out that in it the real depth and richness of 
power lies. The black, dead clod is found to be all 
teeming with the powers of growth. The heavy 
cloud is packed with electricity. Heat lies latent 
everywhere, and the atoms of the most solid things 

294 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 295 

are in perpetual change. Everywhere behind the 
surfaces of living things lurks the great mystery of 
life. 

Perhaps the most delightful feeling which the 
great discoveries of modern times have brought with 
them is that which comes with this ever-increasing 
knowledge of how a higher spirit works in every- 
thing. Dead matter is not dead, because it is capa- 
ble of such a marvellously intimate reception of life. 
There is a natural and there is a spiritual ; and the 
natural is fed and fired by the spiritual always. 
Each owes the other a debt. The natural would be 
heavy and base without the spiritual to inspire it. 
The spiritual would be weak and wasted without the 
natural for it to manifest itself through. The two 
together make complete nature. 

It is the same thing in the great world of man. 
The natural and spiritual are there. The grosser 
part (do we not know it?) is in the men whose lives 
and thoughts are occupied with material affairs. The 
men who deal with the outsides of things, the men 
who carry on business, the men who administer the 
details of government, the men who manage social 
life, the men who study the material world and 
write the chronicles of history, — such men as these 
are what St. Paul means when he talks about the 
natural man. They are not wicked. God forbid ! 
They are to the whole world of human nature what 
the black earth and the brown rocks are to the whole 
substance of the globe. But, just as through the 
rocks and earth run subtle forces which redeem 
them, so in among the masses of the natural men 



296 THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

are scattered men of fire, men of imagination, men 
of unselfish charity, men of enthusiasm, men of re- 
ligion, men who know and love the purposes and 
spiritual ends of business and government and so- 
ciety and science. These men are what Jesus told his 
disciples that they were : "The light of the world " ; 
"The salt of the earth." Think what a dreary place 
the world would be without them. Think how flat 
history would lie if there were not always these 
buoyant and aspiring elements in it, lifting it, mak- 
ing manifest its principles, showing how it belongs 
to God. Think what your own little circle would 
be if there were not among its natural men some 
spiritual manhood. It may be a child, it may be a 
strong woman, it may be a brave, unpractical, pro- 
testing man, it may be a quiet dreamer; whoever it 
is, it is a being with a poet's soul, for this is the 
poets's office always — to live in and to make power- 
fully manifest the heart of things, their inner prin- 
ciples and diviner purposes. 

If in these words I have made clear the difference 
between the natural and spiritual man, then our 
next step must be to see how they both co-exist in 
every full human creature. Just as the entire earth 
comprises both the earthy clod and the living princi- 
ple which pervades it, so every true man has both 
the natural and spiritual manhood in himself. What 
I was saying just now may have sounded like invidi- 
ous discrimination; I may have seemed to be declar- 
ing some doctrine of a spiritual aristocracy, a lofty 
and superior caste, made out of finer clay than the 
ordinary men about them. Such doctrines have 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 297 

been preached. Such claims have been made. But 
always they have proved how wrong and false they 
were by the way in which the self-styled aristocracy 
grew foolish and lost its insight ; while out of the 
mass of men whom it dared to call base and sordid 
came by and by some prophet's voice, full of spirit- 
ual meaning and revelation. The real connective of 
such thoughts lies in the deep but simple truth that 
every full man carries in himself both the natural 
and spiritual manhood. We all have our coarser and 
our finer parts. There can be no mischief in the 
claim that the little kingdom of every man's life 
should be an aristocracy, and that the best part of 
us and not the worst part of us should rule. 

And if in every man, so in every action : there are 
both the natural and the spiritual elements when it 
is perfectly performed. Not merely in the highest 
as we call them, not merely in worshipping and 
teaching and healing, — not merely in the singing of 
poems and the building of cities, but also in the 
making of bargains, and the travelling of journeys, 
and the clasping of hands, and the playing of games 
— if each of these is done as completely as it may be 
done — there are a natural action and a spiritual action 
present together. The natural action is the formal 
deed ; the spiritual action is the motive out of which 
it springs and the affection which is its soul. 

How life starts into new vitality when the spirit- 
ual act completes the natural action! Often, as 
St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, that is not 
first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, 
and afterward that which is spiritual. Material 



298 THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

development goes far in advance of education, of 
philanthropy, or of religion. It builds a splendid 
structure which the higher activities of man are after- 
ward to occupy and to inspire. Is not this really the 
condition of the world to-day? The eager enterprise 
which has possessed the earth for all these centuries 
has created this noble, this wonderful civilization. 
Commerce, war, government, art, learning, social 
refinement, and luxury — they have all contributed, 
and here it stands. How wonderful it is, with its 
great columns driven deep in the unchanging rock, 
with its flashing pinnacles reaching to the sky, with 
the exquisiteness of beauty filling all its courts! 
What is it that it needs? What is it that our civili- 
zation needs? for surely it needs something. Surely 
it almost begins to weary of its own splendor and 
completeness, as if, without something else which 
they have not they were incomplete and unsatisfy- 
ing, almost ugly and tawdry things. What is it 
that our civilization needs to-day? Is it not a spirit- 
ual man? Is it not a worthy occupant of this world- 
wide palace, a man who shall value and seek after 
character above everything, who shall honor and 
rank men by the standards of character and by no 
other? 

Think what our civilization would be with such a 
manhood occupying it. Think what our business 
streets would be if they were all alive, as this or that 
office in them is now alive, with the enthusiasm of 
charity, — our railroads laden with men and women 
bound on benevolent and lofty errands, our tele- 
graphs flashing finer and more sacred messages, our 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 299 

systems of government purged of selfishness, our 
beautiful houses filled with beautiful lives! "A 
dream! a dream! "we say; but, if it could be more 
than a dream, is it not the thing we want, is it not 
the thing which we must have before the world with 
its vast civilization can really be a sight to satisfy 
the eye of God or of a truly godly man? 

May we not say again that the same is true of the 
condition of every man which is true of the condi- 
tion of the world? You and I also have our natural 
side in advance of our spiritual side. What we need 
is that our natural part should be overtaken and oc- 
cupied and inspired by a completer spiritual life. 
When that shall come, all our faculties, all our dex- 
terities, all our leanings, will be filled with and used 
by the most sacred purposes. Our powers will be 
radiant with unselfishness. The powers themselves 
will be more perfect under the power of such occu- 
pation, — we shall see farther and run faster and 
learn more richly; but the great difference will be 
that the powers, great or small, will all be obedient 
to the spiritual purposes within them, and transpar- 
ent with their light. Humility, purity, devoutness, 
simplicity, unselfishness, — these will be the charac- 
teristic qualities of the powerful man. Are they the 
characteristic qualities of the powerful man to-day? 
Are not rather their very opposites? 

I wish that I could make you feel that I am think- 
ing not of a few choice men for whom these lofty 
spiritual things are possible; I am thinking of all 
men, — absolutely and literally of all men. It is as 
true of the lounger at the street corner, of the 



300 THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

wretched tippler in the grog-shop, of the fashionable 
idler in society, as it is of the earnest reformer or the 
high-souled saint, that there is in him somewhere a 
true spiritual man which, if it could awaken, must 
occupy and rule his life. 

What can awaken it? We must not go on longer 
thinking about spirituality, talking about it as we 
have been talking, as if it were a subtle something, 
a sort of substance or element or quality, like heat 
or electricity, which exists in a greater or less degree 
in connection with other elements or qualities in hu- 
man nature. Spirituality is God. To be spiritual 
is to be in communion, in communication, with God, 
who is the Source and Father of all spirits. When 
we say that every man has in him a true spiritual 
element, what we really mean is that every man is a 
child of God. The awakening of the spiritual ele- 
ment in any man is just his coming to know, and act- 
ing on the knowledge, that he is the child of God. 
And who shall teach him that? 

Ah, there we come home immediately to Christ. 
He is the Revelation. Therefore, it is through Him 
that God enters into the soul. And how through 
Him? Under the most simple and universal of all 
laws: it is through obedience to Him. This law 
runs everywhere. To get the good out of any being 
you must obey that being ; you must do his will. 
If you obey Christ, then, He will reveal God to you. 
The spiritual side of your life will awaken, and you 
will be the spiritual man. 

Is that a theory or is it a fact? It is a fact, my 
friends! Plenty of men I have known who have 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 301 

studied Christ and yet remained unspiritual. They 
have turned His words this way and that ; they have 
dissected the history of His religion ; they have been 
wise theologians sometimes; but it has all been as if 
they studied physics or astronomy. But never has 
a man tried to obey Christ and not been lifted into 
spirituality. It cannot be otherwise. You cannot 
step abroad into the sunlight and yet breathe the 
damp air of the prison or the mine. When Christ 
is always bidding those who would obey Him to love 
God, to love their fellow-men, to live for eternity, 
it is impossible for any man to obey Him and yet be 
earthly, selfish, and short-sighted. 

It would make one impatient, if it did not make 
one sad, to see how unreasonable men can be about 
this thing. One of you young men sees a comrade 
whom he honestly admires. That comrade lives a 
higher life than his. Where he is coarse that other 
man is fine ; where he is weak that other man is 
strong. You would expect — what? Why, certainly, 
that, honoring that other man's life, he would begin 
to live that life himself. Instead of that you see 
him going on in his own life unchanged. He lives 
basely and he praises goodness both at once. And 
when you ask him for some sort of explanation, he 
declares: "Oh, this man has a religious nature! I 
have not." A religious nature ! It is as if the jewel 
lying dark in the shadow looked out upon its brother 
jewel blazing in the sun, and said: "Oh, he has a 
brilliant nature. He is made to blaze and burn." 
Go forth, O darkened jewel ; go forth into the sun- 
light. Give the sun a chance to find the power of 



302 THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

brilliancy which is in you. Do not dare to say you 
cannot shine until first you have put yourself where 
shining is a possibility ! And so one wants to say to 
the young man who thinks he was not made to be 
religious : ' ' Try to do what Jesus Christ wants you to 
do; try to do His will and see what happens." Very 
slowly it may be, breaking out with great difficulty 
through the crust that lies above it, still the spiritual 
sense must stir, the spiritual man must come out to 
the light and know himself. That is the new birth 
which Jesus promised, whose unexpected richness 
has taken by surprise so many souls. 

You know how Christ is always saying to people 
in the Gospels, " Follow me!" What does He 
mean? It is not that He wants a mighty company 
for the glory to Himself that it would bring; it is 
simply that He sees that if men follow Him, then 
He can give them God. He knows a power of re- 
ceiving God which He longs to bring forth in them. 
So He calls to men one after another through the 
Gospels, "Follow me." 

And so He calls to us. It is the sum of His re- 
ligion. If we can follow Him, we shall grow spirit- 
ual. Then how strong and safe we are ! Age and 
trouble and death cannot touch us any more than 
the spear can wound the air. He who lives in the 
spirit never grows old. The outward man perishes, 
but the inward man has a perpetual youth ; and sor- 
row only touches the spiritual life with a more mel- 
low happiness, and death only opens wide the doo 
through which it passes into perfect union with God 

But it is time to pass on from this attempt to de 



; 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 303 

scribe what is the spiritual man, and see what is 
meant by St. Paul's statement of the functions which 
belong to him. "He that is spiritual judgeth all 
things, yet he himself is judged of no man." Judg- 
ment and independence — those are the rights of 
spiritual manhood. 

Think first of judgment. The impulse to form 
judgments is almost irresistible, and yet Jesus says, 
"Judge not, and ye shall not be judged," accom- 
panying His injunction with almost a threat. And 
we ourselves are always hesitating between our duty 
of judging and our other hardly less imperative duty 
of not judging. We ought to discriminate between 
our fellow-men, and yet who are we that we should 
pronounce upon our brethren? May not the solution 
of the seeming contradiction lie in St. Paul's words? 
It is not that we must not judge, but we must judge 
with the right faculty; the right part of us must 
judge. Here is some man who stands before the 
world, — what shall I think of him? But before that 
comes the other question : " With what shall I think 
of him? What faculty shall I bring to bear upon 
him? Shall I judge him merely with my eyes and 
my aesthetic sense, and see whether he is beautiful? 
Shall I judge him with my social instinct, and see 
whether he is pleasant company? Shall I judge 
him with my commercial skill, and see whether he 
is growing rich? Shall I judge him by my sensibility 
to other men's judgments, and test whether he is 
popular? Shall I test him by my knowledge, and 
see whether he is learned? All of these are judg- 
ments about the man. If I take them for judgments 



304 THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

of the man, deciding what he really is (as men are 
always taking them), I am all wrong. Nothing but 
the part of me which is spiritual can judge that, — 
can judge him. That part of me fixes its eye upon 
character, discerns motives. That is the only true 
judge. 

Certainly, it is the only judge that any action 
which is worth the doing, any action which has lof- 
tiness or meaning in it, has much thought of or re- 
gard for. You do some little trivial thing, some one 
of the small actions of society, and you are anxious 
to know what the lower and smaller parts of your 
brethren will think about it. Will it please or offend 
their taste ? Will it help or hurt their liking for 
you? But when you do some moral act, some act 
which has a true character in it and is really you, 
these little questions fade away. If men praise your 
action for its beauty, you resent it ! If men say it 
will make you rich or honored, you turn aside from 
them and will not listen. Only when some man who 
evidently values goodness for its goodness calmly 
says : * ' The deed is good. Whether it brings wealth 
or poverty, whether it brings repute or scorn, the 
deed is good," then you are satisfied. Here is a 
judge who has a right to judge men, a judge whom 
no man can resent. 

It is none the less true if the judgment is a con- 
demnation, — if the man who is spiritual says, "The 
deed is bad," and not, "The deed is good." Have 
you never seen a group of boys submitting to the 
judgment of one comrade who, quietly living in the 
midst of them, was purer, braver, and loftier in his 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 305 

standards than the rest of them ? They may have 
wished he was away, — very often people do not like 
the judges whom they most respect. They may 
have resented something which seemed arrogant 
about his goodness, but it was his arrogance and not 
his goodness that they resented. And all the time 
he judged them. He unmasked them to themselves, 
and with a wonderful meekness they acknowledged 
his judgment, and owned themselves for what they 
really were before the standards which his life made 
clear. 

And many a group of men is just the same. "Do 
ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? " 
wrote Paul to the Corinthians and the saints, — by 
which is meant just exactly this: the men who are 
spiritual, the men who believe in things unseen, the 
men who care for character, do judge the world to- 
day. Let a bad man stand up in the community, 
and however he is praised and imitated and pro- 
moted by all sorts of men, he is aware and all the 
community is aware that he is being judged by a 
quiet, patient, earnest body of men, who, going their 
way through the familiar tasks of life, are all the 
while filling the air with loftier standards. The bad 
man may not see them, but he knows that they are 
there. His very bravado and bluster often mean 
how perfectly he is aware of them. He knows how 
helpless his ordinary acts are in their presence. And, 
wrap the adulation of his own friends and syco- 
phants about him as closely as he will, he never can 
shut out this judgment of the spiritual man. 

And here comes in again the truth of which I have 



306 THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

already spoken, that every man has the power of the 
spiritual manhood in himself, as well as close around 
him. The felt judgment of the men of higher stand- 
ards wakens the higher standard in the man's own 
heart. Oh, self-reproach is far more common than 
we think! Many a man whom, in our easy confi- 
dence that we know each other, we call reckless or 
hardened, is really being judged all the while by his 
own spiritual self, is standing and trembling before 
the judgment-seat of his own better nature. 

Put these two things together, and have you not 
got the Judgment Day? Already through the thick 
cloud of daily incidents we can see the Great White 
Throne. Already in the remonstrances of a man's 
own conscience, stirred to life by the protesting wit- 
ness of the goodness in whose presence he lives, 
there is heard the thunder of the eternal verdict. 

And then go higher still. Instead of the weak 
spirituality of the best men the world can show, let 
us see God, the Father of all spiritual life, God the 
Holy Spirit ; and instead of the feeble appeal which 
the best man's goodness can make to his brother's 
conscience, let us hear the arraignment of the child 
by the Father, let us think of the terrible awakening 
of the child's reproachful better nature when he 
stands in the full presence of his Father's grieved 
and wounded righteousness and love, — think all that, 
and have you not the Judgment Day? No man can 
tell us its geography, — where in the universe that 
mysterious valley of Jehosaphat may be, that valley 
of decision where the "multitudes, multitudes" shall 
be gathered, — but it will be wherever God in His 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 307 

perfect spirituality draws back the veil and looks full 
in the face of His assembled world. I believe there 
shall be something corresponding to the scenic pic- 
ture which the Scriptures draw, but the essence of 
it must be in the eternal right and power which 
spirituality has to judge unspirituality. The essence 
of it is already wherever the spiritual is judging the 
unspiritual in any little judgment-seat on earth. 

Sometimes we hear good men complaining that 
goodness is so powerless; the effort to do right and 
to keep a pure soul and to live by highest standards 
is dishonored and despised, we hear. All such com- 
plaints are utterly unworthy of the good man. 
There is nothing more refreshing and magnificent in 
the whole world than the satisfied good man, the 
man who lives to do right, who is entirely above 
such weak complaints and never dreams of making 
them. In the first place he is too busy, too per- 
petually occupied with the enthusiastic struggle of 
his life, to think whether he is powerful or not. He 
is a being in himself, and if he can so bear this life 
of his that God shall see it and approve it, and be 
able to fill it with Himself, he must be satisfied. But 
then, if he does lift up his eyes and look about, he 
cannot count himself powerless. Rather he is over- 
whelmed and oppressed by the power that he 
carries. For is he not the judge of all things? O 
my dear friends, it must be that a truly spiritual 
man has nothing to complain of in the world ! It is 
not that he must struggle on in misery and contempt 
until he gets to heaven, and only there be happy 
and content, but now, here, all that is best in life is 



308 THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

his. Let him not degrade the high dignity of his 
lot, nor make it less tempting to other men by talk- 
ing of its sacrifices or disgraces. He that is spirit- 
ual is already the king of the world. 

One other declaration the apostle makes about the 
spiritual man, which we must not entirely neglect to 
speak of. "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, 
yet he himself is judged of no man." The spiritual 
man, while he stands judging by the highest stand- 
ards whether men and things and institutions are 
good or bad, is all the while himself based on a 
foundation of his own which does not move with the 
perpetual changes of the things about him. I feel a 
truth in those words the moment they are spoken. 
Think of the man whom I have tried to picture, 
who stands in the centre of a group or a community 
and makes the men and things about him know 
whether they are good or bad. Where do his stand- 
ards come from? Does he get them out of the com- 
munity which he is afterward to judge by them? 
That would be very insignificant. Not many days 
would his fellow-men consent to be judged by him, 
if that were so. Such judges there are, men who 
pretend to do nothing more than just to reflect back 
on their brethren the standards of life which have 
first been caught from them. But the true spiritual 
judge of men, whom men acknowledge, — we immedi- 
ately feel something quite different concerning him, 
— he stands on a footing of his own. He tests the 
currents of his race or of his time, because, while he 
stands in the midst of his race or of his time, he is 
not drifting with it. His foundations are his own ; 



THE SPIRITUAL MAN 309 

and while the waves that pass by him take their 
bearings and measure their speed by him, they never 
dream of moving him at their will. He may move 
with them, he may even use them in his movement, 
as the steamship uses the waves on which it floats, 
but they do not give it its direction or its speed. 
He judgeth all men; yet himself is judged of no 
man! 

Such men there always are, — alas for the world if 
they should ever fail! The greatest of such men 
was Jesus. "The Father hath committed all judg- 
ment unto the Son," He said. Wherever men 
touched His life they were judged instantly. It 
was as if an object of indistinguishable color floated 
out into the sunlight, and at once knew itself and 
showed to all who looked on what its color was. 
John, Peter, Nicodemus, Herod, Judas, Andrew, 
the nameless centurion, the nameless young noble- 
man, — how we see instantly what they are when they 
touch Jesus ! He judges them all, and yet what one 
of them judges Him? He goes apart from them all 
when the day is done, and climbs up the hill and 
lays His soul upon the soul of His Father, and so, 
alone, is judged. 

Oh, there is a real consciousness in all of us that 
no man is really strong unless this which is true of 
Jesus is also true of him. In our imperfectness it 
may be true of part of us, and not true of the whole. 
There may be one side of my being in which I do 
accept and depend upon the judgments of my fel- 
low-men ; while, at the same time, on another side, 
I insist on coming to absolute righteousness and 



3IO THE SPIRITUAL MAN 

absolute truth and being judged by them alone. On 
this second side only am I strong. On this second 
side only will my brethren really feel that I am 
strong, and make me their judge. There only am I 
really spiritual, and so there only can it be possible 
for me to judge all things. 

What will be the temper of the man who thus 
stands on his own convictions and judges his fellow- 
men? Will he be arrogant and intolerant? Not if 
he is really spiritual ; for, as I said before, all spirit- 
uality is God. He who is really spiritual makes him- 
self but the channel through which God can declare 
Himself. The judgment, when it comes, is not his, 
but God's. He must be humble, for he has laid 
himself low that God may flow over his life into 
these other lives. And he must be full of sympa- 
thy, because where any part of God can flow, the 
whole of God will flow, and "God is Love." Hu- 
mility and sympathy must fill the strong judgments 
of the man who judges all things because he is 
spiritual. 

And so it all comes to this, — that if you and I can 
realty give ourselves to God and be made His men 
in Jesus Christ, then we shall attain to that which 
we dream of, which we desire, but which so often 
seems very far away. We shall be able to under- 
stand and help our fellow-men without being their 
slaves. In very virtue of our freedom, we shall be 
able to understand them, and reveal them to them- 
selves, and help them. And there is nothing better, 
nothing happier in the world than that. May we 
be made fit for it by being made God's men in Christ ! 



XVIII. 
DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD. 

" I delight in the law of God." — Romans vii. 23. 

If we know what a man delights in, we know 
what sort of a man he is. " Where do you find your 
greatest pleasure?" is certainly one of the most 
searching test-questions by which men may try their 
own or their friends' lives. Our circumstances tie 
us down to the things we have to do; but when our 
circumstances let us up and we are free, what do we 
fly to with delight? One to the pleasures of the 
senses, — the appetites and the lusts; another to 
the social joys; another to the charm of books; 
another to the glory of nature; another into 
the struggle for influence and fame. How they 
scatter as soon as they are free! It is as if you 
opened the doors of a great menagerie, and all the 
beasts that had lived monotonously there together 
felt their primal instincts once more, and the lion 
sprang with a glad roar toward the forest, and the 
eagle swept upward toward the sun, and the snake 
shot out of sight into the grass of the thicket. In 
all the confusion that pervades this world and per- 
plexes us about the characters of the men that we 

311 



312 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

know the best, would there not be a clearing-off of 
every doubt and mystery if every man for one ap- 
pointed hour should do the thing in which he most 
delighted? It would be an hour of strange revela- 
tions, but when it was over it would be like the 
morning after the Judgment Day. We should know 
ourselves and one another. 

St. Paul gives us his statement here. He tells us 
what he delights in, and it is so remarkable, it is so 
different from what delights most men, that we may 
well give it our study. It is the story of the new 
life which he was always talking of, the beginning 
of which was his most precious memory, and to 
grow in which was his supreme desire. 

"I delight in the Law of God," he said. What 
is the Law of God? As we live in the world we look 
around us and see a multitude of operations going 
on. How manifold they are! How confused and 
intricate they seem to us at first ! The stars, the 
plants, the waves, the men, the nations — all moving 
back and forth on one another; everything restless, 
nothing still. Now, to a low order of intelligence 
there is sufficient pleasure in the mere confused 
movement of this mass of life. A low, dull-minded 
man is satisfied with the mere variety and vitality 
of the moving universe, as a child will look out of a 
window for hours and be amused enough with the 
change and liveliness of the scene before him, and 
never ask whither the procession that he sees is 
moving. But as a man improves, this mere unrea- 
soning sight is not enough. He must look deeper. 
The confused variety, the ever-shuffling movement, 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 313 

cease to give him pleasure, and only tantalize and 
provoke him unless his eye can fasten on some law 
or principle which, if it does not tell him by what 
force, at least can tell him by what method, the per- 
petual movement is maintained. He must find a 
uniformity in the circling of the stars and the grow- 
ing of the plants, and the coming and going of the 
tides; and when he has found it, when, through 
the clash and murmur of mere noise, beats out 
at last, first indistinctly and then clearer and more 
clear, the rhythm of harmonious order, — then he 
has come to a new kind of pleasure : he delights in 
a law. 

Much harder in some respects, and yet much 
easier in others, is the effort to which the man 
is driven to discover a law in human action. The 
simplest instincts suggest it, and yet the most acute 
analysis cannot wholly trace it. But in human ac- 
tion man can least rest without a law. His own 
heart will not let him believe that, however it may 
be with the trees and stars, the actions of mankind 
are things of chance, capable of being submitted to 
and governed by no principle; and so he does dis- 
cover various laws under which men act, and at last 
down deep under them all he discovers the funda- 
mental law of conscience, the law of right and 
wrong, and sees that, however other influences have 
come and gone, have crossed it and recrossed it and 
mixed themselves up with it, still, always recogniza- 
ble, there has always been, underneath everything, 
the principle of righteousness— something which 
proclaimed that certain deeds were right and must 



314 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

be done, and that certain other deeds were wrong 
and men must not do them. 

Now, when a man discovers this, and begins to 
test the world by it, he has entered into a new ca- 
pacity for pleasure. Deeds which before gave him 
delight only because they stirred his blood and 
touched his taste, now fall with quiet and profound 
satisfaction upon his sense of righteousness. "It is 
right," he says of some event of which the world is 
talking; and above any half-sensuous joy that comes 
from its picturesqueness or its bravery, that right- 
eousness of it, that harmony with the sense of Tight- 
ness that is lying in his soul, gives him a profound 
and peaceful satisfaction. He delights in the law 
of righteousness. 

We pause here for a moment just to say how piti- 
able the man's life has been who has never known 
what this satisfaction is. As indescribable as the 
color of a rose to a blind man or the sound of a 
trumpet to the deaf, is the joy of righteousness to a 
man with no moral sense. "The thing is right," — to 
say that unqualifiedly of anything, to feel the deed 
you see fit itself into the conception of goodness that 
is in your soul, so that the two claim one another 
like the embrace of mother and daughter, like the 
mutual recognition of seed and ground, — that is a 
joy, pure, deep, and indescribable to any one who has 
not felt it. I hardly dare believe that there is any 
man who hever felt it; but just as to some men the 
sight of the stars is a rare luxury while other men 
study them night after night, just as some of us go 
once in our life and look at the great pictures while 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 315 

other men almost live in their sacred presence, so 
this delight in the law of righteousness, which is a 
sensation once or twice in a lifetime to many, is a 
continual passion to some men. They could not live 
without it. 

But how cold it is — how abstract — this simple 
adoration of a law! By-and-by the man's soul must 
have something else ! Who made this law? Whence 
comes this beautiful, imperious standard of right- 
eousness? And then (we need not try now to tell 
how), by various revelations comes out into sight as 
the background and source of everything, the dear, 
vast personality of God. How solemn and sublime 
it is! "He made us ," — man has never done more 
than floated on the surface of that thought. "He 
made us! And all that we are, all that is in us, 
came out from Him. And if there is a principle of 
righteousness in us that makes us test and judge 
things morally and say that they are right or wrong, 
He put it there. And if He put it there, it was 
Himself He put there. This law of right and wrong 
is but the projection of His nature, the inspiration 
of His being. When I say that a thing is right, I 
mean that it meets and finds and harmonizes with 
Him. I, the child, have this of my Father in me — 
His standard and pattern of righteousness. And 
when my brother here by my side resists a temptation, 
when he flings back a bribe, when he drags a wrecked 
life to the shore and saves it, I know at once that 
between that deed and the purity and love of God 
there is a bright, true harmony ; it is an act that God 
would smile on, — nay, it is an act that God might do. 



316 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

And now, this God, who is He? My Maker! My 
Father! My everything! This beautiful world, He 
made it! This deliciousness of life, He gave it! I 
put out my hands and they come back to me loaded 
with His ever-falling mercies! I walk my daily 
path and my feet are set upon His thick-sown bene- 
fits. Ever since I was born He has been showing 
me how He loves me, and tempting back my love to 
Him. And now, if I find that this law of righteous- 
ness is His law ; if, instead of tracing everywhere the 
beautiful persistency of an abstract principle, I see 
everywhere Him, my Friend and Father, working 
on men's natures with an influence which I have 
felt impressing itself on me, what then? There is 
nothing cold or abstract any longer. Every triumph 
of righteousness is an assertion of my Father's na- 
ture. Every sign of the law's working is a signal of 
His presence. It is not "it" any longer. It is 
"He." I delight not merely in the law of right- 
eousness, but I delight in the Law of God. 

I do not know whether there is anything here that 
seems to you strange or obscure. It has seemed 
strange to some men. But surely it is very simple. 
If I live in and love the Fatherhood of God, then 
every desire of mine that righteousness should be 
done is warmed and fired with all the intensity of 
my filial love to Him. It is just such a feeling as 
might be in the mind of a loving son of a great 
prince or governor. He would see the absolute 
righteousness of the commandments that his father 
gave, and for their own sakes he would desire that 
they should be obeyed. Having his father's nature, 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 317 

he would see just as his father saw when he made 
the law — that it was good and just in itself; but this 
would not conflict with a profound enthusiasm for it 
because it was his father's. All his filial love would 
fire his devotion to it. If he went out to fight in 
order to sustain it, there would be no separation of 
the motives that moved his arm as he struck one 
single blow for the abstract right and for his father's 
honor. It is his perception of the law's justice, made 
warm and tender with his love for his father, that 
fills his heart as he delights in his father's law. 

Now, with all our unfilialness, let us lift up our 
hearts and imagine ourselves for a moment the per- 
fectly filial children of our Heavenly Father. Let 
us forget the sins of yesterday, the ingratitudes and 
forgetfulnesses which to-day have stained our love. 
Let us imagine ourselves all that God's children 
might be, and then let there come to us, as we stand 
with quick, attentive ears, the story of how all over 
the world there is a Law of God at work. It rustles 
right by my feet at first. Some child I know is 
tempted to steal or cheat, and does not do it because 
God has forbidden it. Some man, burning with 
lust, is held back from his sin because he knows that 
it is wrong. And then more faintly I hear the same 
tidings come from a great distance. Some hero in 
China has laid his life down in self-sacrifice. Some 
good deed in the Sandwich Islands bears witness 
that there are souls there struggling for the right. 
And then sounds come out of the past. Some 
martyr in the sixteenth century went to the stake 
rather than deny his Lord. Some old-time Greek 



318 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

would not betray his friend, and so he gladly died. 
What is the sum of all these tales of goodness, these 
testimonies of righteousness from all the ages and 
from all the world? Children of God, what do they 
bring to us? At once a joy in righteousness and a 
joy in our Father, A delight in the Law of God. 
There is no conflict, no jealousy. God is the Law, 
the Law is God. And added to the deep, pure 
sense of satisfaction that I spoke of, that rises cool 
and sweet from the perfect fitting of the action to 
our sense of right, all mingled with it and setting it 
into a glow, there is a happiness in the new exhibi- 
tion and the extended sway of Him whose glory 
and power are our light and life — our Father, God. 
In its broadest way this is, I think, the soul's de- 
lighting in the Law of God. It is a noble life. This, 
I think, is what Paul meant. But now we must turn 
for a moment and remember that, while Paul meant 
this, he meant this in a more special form than that 
in which I have stated it. Paul taught a theology ; 
we must not forget that. We dishonor and misun- 
derstand him if we make his theology, as it has been 
so often made, so special and narrow that it does not 
coincide with and explain the problems and ques- 
tions of ordinary, universal life. But while we must 
always shrink from turning him into a mere local 
Jewish teacher, we must get at his full meaning al- 
ways by putting ourselves as far as possible into his 
place and time and way of thinking. Now, when 
Paul speaks of the Law of God, he is thinking 
especially of the Law of the Old Testament, by 
which his people had been trained for the coming of 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 319 

Christ. He is thinking of the Bible history of the 
moral experiment of humanity. He is thinking of 
the Bible as the Book of this universal law of which 
we have been speaking. That is the Law of God 
which he delights in. And so we may apply what 
we have been saying not merely to the universal law 
of God which is written everywhere and made known 
to us in many ways, but to that special revelation of 
the Divine Will which is given to us in the Bible. 
Surely, if there is in us such a soul as longs every- 
where to discover the intentions and purposes of 
God in this perplexed world where we live, the very 
idea of a written Law of God — a Book which shall so 
utter Him that any man studying it shall know what 
He desires, and find His commandments written 
plain and clear — must be the most welcome blessing 
that it can dream of. And that is just what the 
Bible is — a Law of God, an utterance of a regulative 
word. That is the side on which it approaches us. 
That is the claim with which it comes to us. It is 
not a mere satisfactory account of the universe, ap- 
pealing to our intelligence; it is not a poem of 
beautiful life, appealing to our imagination; but it 
is a law appealing to our conscience, and just in 
proportion as men read the Bible with their con- 
sciences does it satisfy them and send them away 
saying, "I delight in the Law of God." 

I am glad to say this because it seems to me that 
very often nowadays men and women (we here, per- 
haps) are not getting the comfort and pleasure which 
we ought to out of our Bibles, because we do not go 
to them with the right idea. We miss, it may be, in 



320 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

ourselves that eagerness and joy with which we know 
that other Christians have turned to the Bible con- 
stantly and lingered over its pages. We read it, and 
it interests us; but it may well be that there are 
some of the young people whom I speak to, who 
have often reproached themselves that they could 
not feel that intimate and dear affection for the 
Bible, as the friend of their souls, the treasure of 
their lives, which they have heard older people tell 
about. It is not good that it should be so. It is a 
sad loss to the life not to love the Bible. Of course 
there may be other reasons, but may not one reason 
be that, in the midst of all the discussions and dis- 
coveries about the Bible in our time, the primary 
purpose of the Bible has been too much dimmed, 
too often lost? The histories of the Bible have been 
analyzed. Its poetry has been magnified. It has 
come to be treated in many circles as a literary work, 
and so we do not easily regard it as our fathers did, 
as a Book purely for regulation. It has been so 
much a Book for criticism that we do not easily 
make it the Book of Life. What many of us want, 
I am sure, is to get back to the very simplest thought 
of the Bible. It has all one plain, direct intent. 
There is nothing told us in it to satisfy our curiosity 
or to gratify our taste ; nothing that has not the one 
great purpose — to regulate our lives. God is shown 
to us in it, not in His absoluteness as the Lord of 
Heaven, but in His relations to us, as our Maker, 
Master, Father, It is a Law of God, and will open 
its heart and beauty only to those who come to it as 
a law, with hearts asking for commandment and 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 32 1 

promising obedience. Certainly if we could go to 
our Bible thus, if to-night when we open its pages 
it could be with hearts feeling their failures in gov- 
erning themselves and longing to have God govern 
them, anxiously asking Him, "Lord, what wilt thou 
have me to do? " the Bible would speak to us as it 
does not speak now ; and, entering into its new mas- 
tery, finding it really the lord and ruler of our life, 
we should learn to love it as we learned to depend 
upon it, and it would no longer seem strange or ex- 
travagant for us to say : "I love my Bible " ; "I de- 
light in the Law of God." 

I think, then, that, both with reference to the uni- 
versal law of righteousness and also with reference 
to the special revelation of the Bible, we have seen 
that a delight in the Law of God means simply this 
— a love for God and a profound and peaceful satis- 
faction that One whom we love and trust entirely is 
ruling us and everything about us. It is as simple 
as that. Look at the life of Jesus — was there ever 
a Being who so delighted in the Law of God as He 
did? It was His meat and drink to do His Father's 
Will; and that calm face, unmoved among the tu- 
mult and the roar, kept its perfect calmness because 
in, under, through it all, He knew that God was ful- 
filling His purposes, manifesting Himself. That 
satisfied Him entirely. "Ye could do nothing 
against me unless it were given you from above," 
He said to His persecutors, and so He let His per- 
secutors do their worst. "Even so, Father, for so it 
seemed good in thy sight" — that was the end of 
everything for Him. He knew what God's Law 



322 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

was. A portion of the Deity Himself, He had felt 
it control the throbbing pulses of the universe, and 
had seen the bright, endless ranks of Cherubim and 
Seraphim bow before it, and uncounted hosts of 
angels fly to do its bidding. And now, a man, 
weary and dusty and bewildered, it seemed glorious 
and sweet that His life as He toiled back and 
forth between Jerusalem and Galilee, up the steep 
hill at Nazareth, and at last out of the gate to 
Calvary, was all held and sustained and regulated 
by that eternal, supreme Law. It rested Him and 
strengthened Him. He delighted in the Law of 
God. 

Sometimes it seems to me as if we, with our im- 
perfect obedience to and realization of God, getting 
so little of what He wants to give us every day, 
wrenching ourselves by our wilfulness out of His 
care, — as if we, living thus and looking from our dis- 
ordered lives at the calm, obedient life of Jesus, 
were like a wrecked and broken ship lying dismasted 
on the ocean, feeling the winds that it could not 
obey, tossed by the waves on which it could not 
steer, — as if that ship should see bearing down upon 
it a ship like itself, only perfect, — every sail set, 
every breeze caught, ruling the waves that carried 
it, borne on in all its stateliness by the very ocean 
that seemed ready to open its black mouth and swal- 
low the poor, helpless wreck that floated like a for- 
eign and unwelcome thing upon its bosom. So 
Jesus, perfectly obedient to His Father, delights in 
the same Law of which we are so apt to be afraid. 
We love to look at His life. And most of all the 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 323 

stately ship is beautiful to us if she bears down to 
us that she may help us. The perfect obedience 
of Jesus, beautiful in itself, is a thousand fold more 
beautiful if it gives itself to the rescue of us from 
our disobedience. 

If we understand, then, what it is to delight in the 
Law of God, I think we can see easily enough what 
must be the blessed consequences of such a noble 
condition in the life of the happy man who has at- 
tained it. It will sweep out of his life the two great 
hindrances that most impede and vex the life of 
every man — selfishness and restlessness. O my 
dear people, look into your lives and tell me, what 
is it that keeps you unhappy and ineffective? Is it 
not these — these which came in across the pure hap- 
piness of Eden and ever since have held men in their 
power. I open the old palace of the Caesars and I 
open the squalid hut of some Fiji barbarian, and 
in both there is just what makes miserable your 
house and heart, the old, undying tempters and tor- 
mentors of the human soul — selfishness and restless- 
ness. What is there that can cast them out and 
bring in their bright opposites, devotion and peace? 
What but just this, a delight in the Law of God ; 
such a new state of being that the soul shall be 
happy in knowing that God reigns, and in obediently 
helping His government to its complete results. Is 
there any selfishness left there? What room is there 
for it when the one wish is that God's Will may be 
done? Is there any restlessness left there? Where 
can there be any flaw for it in the entire peace of a 
soul trusted away from itself into the hands of a 



324 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

Lord of perfect wisdom and entire love? O my 
dear people, all the while that you are selfish and 
restless there is a region of unselfishness and peace 
right by your side in which you might be walking. 
If you would only make one effort, leap one fence, 
you would be in it, and your life would be changed. 
That leap is taken, that change comes, when you be- 
gin to delight in the Law of God. 

Am I painting what is only a mockery? Am I 
telling of something which is very bright and tempt- 
ing, but which is utterly out of your power or mine 
to attain? God forbid! It is not an easy, matter- 
of-course thing, I know. I have talked, perhaps, as 
if it were very easy for St. Paul. It is time for me 
to read you his other verse and show you how hard 
he found it, what a perpetual struggle it was to him. 
He says there were two men in him, one of which 
was capable of this supreme delight, while the other 
lived in lusts and low desires. " I delight in the Law 
of God after the inner man," he says. "But I see 
another law in my members warring against the law 
of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the 
law of sin, which is in my members. Oh, wretched 
man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death ! " He saw the beauty and peace of 
living in the delight of the Law of God. Part of 
the time he lived up there in that high employment ; 
but then his lower passions were always dragging 
him down. Just your life and mine exactly; and 
certainly it may help us when we see that the great 
Paul — that Saint of God — had not escaped from this 
harassing and fluctuating life in which we are living. 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 325 

He has escaped it now. In God's very presence, 
there in heaven where he stands through his Re- 
deemer, he has left selfishness and restlessness be- 
hind forever and has entered into entire devotion 
and perfect peace. But when he wrote these words 
he was just where we are — trying to delight in God 
and yet dragged back always by pride and selfish- 
ness to his own restless self. 

If Paul could speak to us to-day he would tell us 
how he finally escaped, by what divine and loving 
ways God led him out of the power of his lusts and 
into the glory of that pure delight in God in which 
he is now laboring. "Be patient/' he would say, — 
"be patient, my brethren, and never be discouraged. 
Your God is able to deliver you, and will deliver you 
at last." 

Shall we venture to put words into the mouth of 
the glorified Apostle and think what he would say 
to us if he should speak to his brethren who are 
wandering and struggling in the darkness which 
he must so well remember? We run no risk, for we 
know well enough what he would say to us. 

First of all would he not say : "Never forget that 
you have the power, the capacity of delighting in 
the Law of God. Let no tendency to grovel and 
to love low things blot out of your soul the certainty 
that there is in you a capacity for a higher happi- 
ness. Do not think it impossible, even down where 
you are in the depths of degraded passion, do not 
think it impossible that you should sit in heavenly 
places with Christ Jesus and delight in the Law of 
God. Cling to the possibility of the highest life, 



326 DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 

however low you sink." Would he not urge us with 
some such words as these? 

And then again he would say: "Obey the Law 
of God even if you have no love for it, and so you 
will learn to love it. Even if obedience be only a 
task, even if righteousness be a burden and a cross 
to you, even if you have to force yourself to your 
duty — still, do it. The Law of God is delightful; 
force yourself up to it and you shall know its de- 
light. Do your duty, even if duty be wearisome and 
hard, for then you are in the place where it can be- 
come joyous and easy to you." That he would say 
with all the emphasis of his own brave duty-doing 
life. 

But then (and we can almost hear his voice rise 
and see his face glow as he advances), then he would 
go on to what he would most love to say. "I 
escaped," he would declare, "purely and solely by 
the help of Christ. He took me, and, drawing me 
into His love, made me delight in God's Law by 
my delight in Him. He took me and showed me 
the Beauty of Holiness by offering me Himself as 
the Master to serve, the Law to obey. Look at Him ! 
—-He is the Law of God. To be conformed to Him 
is to obey God perfectly. Can you love Him? Can 
you not love Him? He lived for us, for me and 
you," the old Apostle would say, putting himself 
right by our side. "He lived for us, He died for 
us, He lives for us forever, — can you not, must you 
not love Him? Must not your soul delight in Him?" 
And then, turning back to the life and work of 
heaven, we should hear him say as his voice ceased 



DELIGHT IN THE LAW OF GOD 327 

from our ears: "To delight in Him, that is to de- 
light in the Law of God. Christ is the end of the 
Law for righteousness." 

We can at least do this which he tells us, — we can 
believe that there is in us the power of loving God's 
Law. We can obey God's Law even before we love 
it, doing our duty however hard it be. And we can 
pray to Him who came to show God to all men, 
that He will show God to us, and make us delight 
in His Law. 

Oh, let us claim our souls for their highest joys, 
for it is sad and terrible that men and women who 
have the power of loving and obeying God should 
be loving and obeying the tyrants of this world — 
houses and fortunes and the poor standards of 
Society. May God set us free and lift us up to 
Himself! 






XIX. 

THE ARK OF THE COVENANT. 

" And the ark of the covenant of the Lord went before them." — 
Numbers x. 33. 

Whenever a Jew read these words they must 
have presented to him a very vivid picture in his 
people's history. They present the same picture 
only less vividly to us. The host of Israel is leav- 
ing Sinai on its long journey across the desert 
Their caravan in its vast numbers has trailed its slow 
length out of the camp at the foot of the mountain 
where it has tarried so long and is stretched out to- 
ward the Promised Land. It goes slowly crawling, 
like a vast serpent, along the dreary stretches of 
sand. And there are other caravans in sight. Just 
as to-day, the Arab from the South, the Egyptian 
from the West, the mixed nomadic tribes who live 
on the bright spots of the desert itself, are moving 
hither and thither, breaking the monotonous hori- 
zon and giving some variety and interest to the des- 
olate sameness of the scene. But among all the 
caravans this one of his forefathers is marked and 
separated to the Hebrew's eye. Not merely by its 
size, not merely because it is a moving nation, not 

328 



THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 329 

merely because it is his forefathers, but mainly be- 
cause of something which is always carried at the 
head of the procession, which gives a tone and char- 
acter to it and all its movements. It is a certain box 
or chest; not very large, some five feet long and 
three feet high and broad, covered with cloths and 
hidden from their sight. This is the Ark of the 
Covenant. No other caravan in all the desert has 
anything like this mysterious and sacred chest. 
Wherever it moves the eyes of all the host are on it. 
Whenever they encamp the tents of the host are 
pitched around it, as if that they might protect it, 
and it might bless them. Whenever it started upon 
the march the voice of Moses is heard, crying aloud : 
"Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered ; 
and let them that hate thee flee before thee." 
Whenever it rests and stands still the same voice 
cries: "Return, O Lord, unto the many thousands 
of Israel/* This is what marks the moving army of 
the Israelites, that wherever they go, the Ark of the 
Covenant of the Lord goes before them. 

At first it looks like superstition and some foolish 
dream of magic. But it is not that at all. The 
following of the ark has a reasonable meaning. 
Really, that golden chest, wrapped in its curtains, 
represents a truth, and that truth it really is which 
is moving on before them and on which their eyes 
are always fastened for direction and for inspiration. 
The truth is that centre-truth of Judaism, that they 
are God's chosen people. That truth, not any mere 
box of wood and gold, it is which is leading them 
and keeping up their courage. It is inside the ark, 



330 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 

this truth of their national belonging to God, in the 
shape of three sacred and venerable relics, — two 
stone tables, on which God had written their funda- 
mental law, a pot of manna which God had sent 
from heaven to satisfy their hunger, and a rod with 
buds upon it which had been the symbol of God's 
life and inspiration imparted to their national High 
Priest, Aaron. God's law, God's care, God's com- 
munication, — these three facts grouped together in 
the ark represented the one truth, — that God was 
their God, that He had taken them for His, that 
He and they belonged to one another. It was that 
truth which they set at the head of their army; 
around that truth the silver trumpets blew, and be- 
hind it the whole multitude of the people marched. 
They followed after it all the day-time, and they 
clustered close around it all the night. No wonder 
that the ark in which, the symbols of that truth were 
enshrined came to seem almost as if it were God 
present in their midst. When it was lifted up, it 
seemed as if it were indeed God rising to go against 
His enemies and theirs. When it was set down upon 
the ground it was almost as if God Himself planted 
Himself among the many thousands of Israel. 

This covenant ark was to the Jews the promise 
of two things which they needed every day and 
hour — safety and direction. It was not safe for 
them where they were, and they did not know 
which way to go. There were the Midianites and 
Moabites about them, and there were the pathless 
sands before them ; what could they do without a 
protector and a guide? And He who helped them 



THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 33 1 

must be both of these to them. It was of no use 
to them that He should protect them if they were 
still left to wander hopelessly. It was of no use to 
them that He should guide them if it were only into 
dangers from which He could not keep them safe. 
Both wisdom and power they must have to look to. 
As David sang long afterwards, their Lord God 
must be a sun and a shield. And both of these 
they knew were in that symbolic ark which they fol- 
lowed as they marched, and clustered around while 
they rested. Wisdom and power met in the stone 
tables and the miraculous manna and in the budded 
rod. 

And now, how far off all this seems! How long 
ago, how far away this caravan of Jews trampling 
along through the weary sand between Arabia and 
Syria, with their strange ark borne along before 
them three thousand years ago! How far away 
from us here on this Sunday morning! It startles 
and delights our sense of picturesqueness to lift our 
eyes all at once from this modern life and let them 
rest away off across the ocean and across the cen- 
turies upon this foreign picture. But have we 
nothing more to do with it than that? If we have 
really got at what the picture means, and if you 
have really minds and hearts to look not at the 
forms alone but at the hearts of things, I hope to 
make you see in that procession following the ark 
the picture of a possible life of yours — the picture 
of a life that, reconciled, covenanted, given away 
and dedicated to God, follows the truth of its dedi- 
cation, makes that the leading and inspiring truth 



332 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 

of everything, and gets safety and guidance out of 
it every day it lives. The Christian life so often 
seems to men a weight and a restraint. It seems 
so often as if it put a man's life into danger and be- 
wilderment, instead of into safety and clearness, to 
give it to God, that I wish we could see it all differ- 
ently; I wish that we could really see, among all 
the purposeless, defenceless nations of the desert, 
wandering without a plan, unsafe, unguided, this 
one procession of the Israelites moving safely and 
surely day after day because they alone had God, 
because they followed the Ark of the Covenant. 

The soul led and protected by its covenant with 
God — that, then, is our subject. But first of all, I 
think we often hesitate at that word " covenant." 
It has an ancient, Jewish sound. It was a word 
under which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob conceived 
their relationship to God. But now it often seems 
as if the word had a hard kind of contract sound 
about it. 

It appears to picture God as standing and weigh- 
ing out His love and benefaction, grain by grain, 
against the scrupulously exacted equivalent which 
man was called upon to render. It seems to miss 
the whole idea of freedom and spontaneousness 
which we rather love to make prominent in the 
thought of God blessing man. But I am sure that 
there is danger of a great deal of our modern talk 
doing injustice to the grand, straightforward religion 
of the old Jews, partly by attributing to them ways 
of thinking which they never had, and partly by 
losing sight of the real eternal value of a great many 






THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 333 

of their broad and simple truths which modern sub- 
tlety has refined away. 

For instance, the Jews no doubt had deeply en- 
grained in their religion the notion of the necessary 
mutualness of every relationship between God and 
man. They believed, that is, that it was impossible 
for God to do anything for man, without man's 
meeting God with a responsive activity of his own. 
God could not bless a people unless the people were 
obedient. God could not speak to a soul unless the 
soul would listen. God could not lead a man 
unless the man would follow. The necessities were 
not artificial but essential. Now, that is a great 
idea. It is an idea which it is dangerous, nay, ab- 
solutely fatal, for religion to lose. We look around, 
and is there one thoughtful man among us who is 
not often in fear for the religion which we see the 
most of now-a-days, lest it should grow weak and 
perish from its losing just this idea of the necessary 
mutualness of the relation of God and man? — men 
expecting to be blessed without being obedient, 
expecting to be enlightened without humble de- 
voutness, expecting to be led to truth and righteous- 
ness when they make no attempt to follow. These 
are the indications of how that old Jewish idea may 
be lost, and of what is the peril of losing it. Now, 
this is just the idea that the Jew pictured to himself 
under the form of a covenant. He was to do some- 
thing and God was to do something. "Draw near 
to me, and I will draw nigh to you" ; "Do this, and 
you shall live" ; "If you will be my people, then I 
will be your God." The mutualness was essential 



334 THE ARK 0F THE COVENANT 

and necessary, not merely arbitrary. It was pictured 
in sacrifices minutely described and punctiliously 
demanded ; but at the bottom it was this great, true, 
everlasting idea, — that for God and man to come 
together both must do something, that God cannot 
meet live men as the sunlight strikes a dead rock, 
merely giving itself to what is helpless, but as the 
sunlight strikes a live tree which must open to re- 
ceive its bounty. There is no covenant with the 
rock. There is a covenant with the tree. 

No doubt the Jews dropped away from the lofty 
simplicity and truth of this idea. With perhaps the 
same tendency to barter which has characterized the 
Hebrew in all times, they did degrade this great 
mutualness of life into a close, hard bargain in 
which, by doing certain formal things, they might 
bind God down to certain mercies of which they 
could not otherwise be sure. The prophets found 
this state of things, and in strong opposition to it 
they proclaimed the perfect freeness of God's mercy : 
"Ho! every one that thirsteth! He that hath no 
money, come ye, buy and eat, without money and 
without price.' ' 

Jesus found the same state of things, — every 
mercy of God ticketed in the price-list of Rabbinical 
scrupulousness, — and He, too, exalted the freedom 
of God. "Whosoever will, let him come." "If 
any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." 
No doubt the high idea of covenant did run down 
into a low idea of contract; but in itself it is a high 
idea, the high idea of the necessary mutualness in 
the life and relationship of God and man. 



THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 335 

As a Christian man, I believe fully that all the 
modern discussion of the being and work of God, 
more or less connected with natural science, which 
often sounds like atheism, is really tending, under 
God, to a better knowledge, on our part, of what He 
is and how He relates Himself to us. And some- 
times it seems to me as if, with its strong assertion 
of the human side, it were just this covenant idea 
which the modern discussion of God is destined to 
restore and to confirm, — as if without weakening the 
absoluteness of God it were bringing forth the way 
in which He has bound Himself to man and made 
it seem impossible for Him to send His best mercies 
until men have risen to their part in the mutual re- 
lationship. The modern physical philosopher, sol- 
emnly insisting that the price of health is cleanliness 
and decency, often reminds us strangely of the He- 
brew Prophet denouncing pestilence upon the people 
who refused to hear and obey the word of God. At 
least this covenant truth of mutualness is in them 
both. 

I have dwelt upon this truth of the covenant be- 
cause it appears in its perfection in the relation 
which the Christian holds to God. I hope that 
after what we have said there is no trouble for our 
minds in carrying over the word " covenant " to the 
richer relations between God and man which Chris- 
tianity makes known, and hearing Jesus called "the 
Mediator of the new covenant." The Christian has 
made a covenant with God ! It was a phrase more 
common once than now. But still it is a great and 
precious truth. What does it mean? Not, surely, 



336 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 

that the Christian has bargained his obedience 
against a certain forgiveness and a certain help, not 
that he has undergone a certain humiliation and 
contrition in virtue of which God has bound Him- 
self that he shall not be punished but shall go to 
heaven: nothing of that sort. But this, — that he 
has entered into a mutualness of life with God ; that 
he has met God's willingness to help him with a 
willingness to be helped ; that he saw God wanted 
to forgive him, but could not because he was im- 
penitent, and so he repented and received forgive- 
ness; that he saw God was willing to pour light and 
strength into him, but could not because he was 
proud, and so he humbled himself and the light 
streamed in ; that he took God and God took him ; 
that he could not have taken God without God's 
taking him, and that God could not have taken him 
without his taking God; but that by mutual love 
they met, one bringing submission and the other 
help, and that those two meeting made the soul's 
salvation-time. 

That is a man's covenant consciousness. And 
when the man becomes aware that out of that cove- 
nant is coming the impulse and the safety of his life, 
that what is guarding him from sin and throwing 
light on duty, and keeping up his courage and fill- 
ing him with hope, is the certainty that all this has 
taken place — that he has given himself to God, — 
when a man knows that, the power by which he lives 
all issues from the certainty of the position in which 
he stands with the great Lord and Master of his 
life. He is the man — walking on strongly behind 






THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 337 

and in the light of this sublime transaction between 
his soul and God — he is the man who is following 
the Ark of the Covenant. 

Years, years ago, perhaps, a young man some- 
where, in some church, some shop, some school, 
who had before lived as if on this green earth, under 
this blue sky, there were no greater being than him- 
self, came to know God. God came to him ! He 
came to God ! Both of these sentences tell the story 
of what happened. It was not an unwilling God 
who laid His hand upon the soul and blessed it. 
It was not an unwilling soul that laid itself upon the 
bosom of the mercy. The soul and God met in 
the covenant of life. Well, years have passed away, 
and now the man is old. How many acts the man 
has done, how many thoughts, how many words 
have crowded in since that day of his boyhood, 
when he and God gave themselves to one another. 
But ask him, and he will tell you that all his life 
has just been following out the promise of that day. 
All that he has done or been of good was wrapped 
up in that perfect gift of himself to the Eternal 
Good. All that he has received of blessing really 
descended on him when the Lord became his God. 
When he has doubted, he has looked up and seen 
His promise shining; when he has been tempted 
that promise has sustained him. He is where he is 
to-day in character and life because of that meeting 
of his life with God's, in church, or shop, or school, 
so many years ago. What shall we say of such a 
life? // has followed the Ark of the Covenant. How 
it brings out the difference in men! They have 



338 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 

traversed the same desert, been parched with the 
same thirst, drank of the same springs, had the same 
comforts or discomforts; but one has had peace and 
purpose, and the other only unrest and discontent. 
One has walked in the footsteps of an apprehended 
God; the other has gone in the ways of his own 
will. One has lived the Israelites' life, and the other 
the Midianites' life; and so one comes to Canaan, 
and the other is lost among the sands. 

But take one step more. How is it possible that 
a conscious and remembered relationship to God 
should constitute a rule of life. "I grant," one 
says, "that it is good for you who are God's child 
to know your Father and to come to as true an 
understanding as you can with Him ; but tell me, 
how does that practically help you? How does it 
unravel for you this snarl of life? How does it 
make you know what you ought to do to-morrow 
morning? How does it teach you how to treat this 
troublesome, ungrateful friend? The Jews' Ark of 
the Covenant was different. It was not merely a 
memory and an idea ; it was there in wood and gold. 
They could see it ; when it turned north they saw 
it; when it turned south they saw it. They had 
only to keep their eyes on it and they were safe." 

But remember the experience to which the Chris- 
tian soul looks back; its covenant which it remem- 
bers was not a mere emotional transaction, begun 
and ended in itself. Just as in the Jews' covenant, 
something came in, — the tables and the manna and 
the rod, — which were mediators, as it were, which 
brought the authority and mercy on the one side to 



THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 339 

the need and the submission on the other, so in the 
Christian's covenant there was a mediator, not a 
thing any longer, but a Living Person who brought 
the willingness of God and the willingness of man 
together. The Christian's whole remembrance of 
his new covenant with God is bound up in associa- 
tion with the Christ in whom it was made. "He 
brought God to me, and me to God, and we met in 
Him," the Christian says. "I never should have 
known how God loved me, and I never should have 
known how I needed God, if He had not shown 
me both." And then when the Christian looks up 
and says, "Where is this covenant of mine to lead 
me?" when he asks just the question that you 
asked — "How will it make for me a rule of life? " — 
behold there, walking before him, a Human Life 
which lightens up all human living, goes He in 
whom the covenant is represented — Jesus Christ, its 
Mediator. What the golden and wooden chest was 
to the Hebrew, this Saviour in His own flesh and 
blood is to the Christian. He goes before His peo- 
ple. He is the Ark of our covenant. To follow 
the Christian Ark of the Covenant is to follow Him. 
O my dear friends, I promise you that I will never 
preach to you any mere vain theological specula- 
tions, that cannot touch your life; but I must tell 
you of what so many Christians here among you 
know so well, of how the covenant between the soul 
and God issues into the service of Him in whom the 
covenant is made, and the life of the Christian be- 
comes the following of Christ. "To follow Christ! 
— that sounds vague. Christ lived so long ago ! If 



340 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 

I had been there, I could have followed Him. I 
could have kept close to Him and imitated every 
action. But now the times have altered. Here in 
our modern homes, now in our youngest century, 
how can I shape these daily acts upon such different 
daily acts of One who lived so long ago, so far 
away ? ' ' 

But if you ever tried it, you would cease to won- 
der. For this is the power of that life of Jesus, — a 
power which you cannot know till you do try it, a 
power which all who have ever tried it will bear 
witness to, — that they who enter into living sym- 
pathy with Him by gratitude do truly see not 
merely how to do those certain things He did, but 
how He would have done, how He would wish to 
have His servants do, every most different and 
modern thing which it may come into their lots, so 
different from His lot, to attempt. The Christian, 
thoroughly in sympathy with Jesus, knows how his 
Christ, who never bought or sold, would manage 
his great business ; knows how his Christ, who had 
no wife or child, would rule a household ; knows 
how his Christ, who lived the patient subject of a 
despotism, would vote as the free and responsible 
citizen of a Republic. He finds his Lord a legible 
and shining Law in every strangest place to which 
his duty calls him. And, doing everywhere what 
he knows that there the Christ would do, in and 
through whom He has been brought near to God, 
he is living a larger service than any Jew tramping 
through the sands after his ark, or any disciple 
following Jesus about the city streets. In a higher 






THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 341 

and fuller way than either of them, he is following 
the Ark of the Covenant. 

I said of the ark that went before the Israelite in 
the desert that it gave him two things — safety and 
guidance. These same two things come to the 
Christian out of his following of Christ. He has 
both security and progress. He is at once kept 
from danger and led on to ever greater things. And 
it is clear that both these things must meet in any 
strong and happy life. Merely to be safe, to rest 
outside of danger, but to make no advance, to con- 
quer no new ground, to grow to nothing greater day 
by day — that is a most depressing life. And merely 
to advance when every step is uncertain, when the 
consciousness of danger is haunting every footstep, 
when you cannot tell whether you are going right 
or wrong — that is a most distressing life. And yet 
almost all our expedients of living seem to aim at 
one of these ends, not at both of them ; either at 
safety or at progress, not at the two together. Con- 
servatism with all its forces tries to make men safe, 
radicalism with its forces tries to keep men moving, 
till safety in thinking and acting comes to sound 
of deadness and torpidity, and progress to many 
ears is full of the ideas of reckless peril and destruc- 
tion. It is the privilege of the true follower of 
Christ that these two, so often separated, meet for 
him. 

See how it is in thought. A man whose whole 
life is led by the consciousness that his life belongs 
not to himself but to his God— led by the Ark of the 
Covenant — is armed most strongly against the worst 



342 THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 

dangers of thinking men. Every thought that 
comes to him is brought into that obedience. He 
cannot think wilfully merely to please himself. He 
cannot think servilely merely to please other people. 
Whim, pride, the love of novelty, the fear of novelty, 
these, which you all know are the perils of thinking 
men, are swallowed up in the conviction that he 
must not think anything lightly or unworthily of 
Him whom he follows. But at the same time the 
limitlessness of the Christ who leads him, the cer- 
tainty that He has infinitely more of truth to show 
than He has yet made known, makes His true fol- 
lower impatient after new ideas and broader fields of 
thought. The Israelite host was at once safer where 
it stood, and yet surer to move onward to new camp- 
ing grounds, than the loose tribes of Moabites and 
Midianites around them. So the Christian thinker 
ought to be at once surer of what he holds and more 
eager to move on to new truth than the disciple of 
any other master. If he loses either his safety or 
his progress, if he grows either a sceptic or a bigot, 
he surrenders his privilege. The intellectual man, 
following the Ark of the Covenant, learns the true 
harmony of positive convictions with free and enter- 
prising thought. 

And it is with life and conduct just as it is with 
thought. Here, too, there seems to be a struggle. 
Safety and progress will not blend with one another. 
One man says: "Let me be safe. Let me be sure 
of doing nothing wrong." And so he shuts himself 
up to a little circle of conventionally good things; 
he cuts off a multitude of innocent pleasures which 



THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 343 

he chooses to consider doubtful ; he never dreams 
of enterprising and original goodness; and all his 
life grows meagre. Another man, seeing him, 
grows afraid of the paralysis of virtue, and goes 
forth recklessly in the fields of wildest license. He 
casts all thoughts of safety aside. What good 
men have most called wrong shall become right 
for him. He will walk through the midst of im- 
purity and yet be pure. He will go to the bot- 
tom of fiendishness and bring up a new kind of 
saintliness from thence. The movement, the zest 
of life, is everything. Safety is too low a thing to 
think of. 

And then comes Christ and His follower; what 
does He do? He binds the follower's heart com- 
pletely to Himself by love. He makes His life and 
His disciple's really one. He makes it His servant's 
one desire to be like Him. This great desire, as a 
triple wall, He builds about His servant's purity. 
He makes him safe with the protection of His own 
character and standards always present there through 
love. The Christian is assaulted by temptation. 
He looks up and sees that the sin to which he is 
tempted is a desertion of his Lord, is a wrong and 
pain to Jesus, and he will not do it. Is there any 
safety so complete as that? But then it is no safety 
of mere laws. It is no limited and bounded nega- 
tive. It is an infinite and boundless positive. As 
his loyalty to Christ restrains him, so also it incites 
him. As he will not do anything in disobedience 
to Christ's nature, so he will not be satisfied until 
he has completely matched that nature with his 



344 THE AR K OF THE COVENANT 

own. It stretches before him into new realms of 
growth and duties that have seemed impossible. 
Virtue is no longer paralysis, but inspiration. 

What is the result? A fear of sin that does not 
bind the feet, but loosens them, and gives them 
wings towards holiness. A longing for holiness that 
is all the more tenderly conscious of its danger of 
temptation. The Christian will always surprise men 
with this mixture of fear and freedom. He will re- 
fuse to do things which men see no harm in, saying: 
"I dare not. It is not safe. I cannot expose my 
soul." And then he will boldly go forth into some 
new field of adventurous duty that men think most 
perilous, doing most unconventional work there, say- 
ing, "The Master whose I am and whom I serve is 
leading me." 

I am talking all in vain unless you who are Chris- 
tians understand me. Do you remember an old 
life when you alternately stood guard over your 
character and tried to live a live, real life? Some- 
times it was one and sometimes it was the other; 
sometimes safety and peace, sometimes progress and 
action. And then came Christ. You gave yourself 
to Him. The new life opened. You have lived 
since then with a new consciousness — that you were 
His — filling everything, sinking down and spreading 
out through all of you. Tell me the story of that 
life. Is it not that safety has ceased to be sluggish 
and action has ceased to be dangerous to you, now 
that safety is rest in Christ and action is work for 
Him? He guards you, and that stimulates you. 
He sets you to work, and that rests you. Righteous- 



THE ARK OF THE COVENANT 345 

ness and peace, which used to be at variance in your 
life, have kissed each other and are reconciled. 

Is not this what we want? — to be safe with a se- 
curity that is not cowardice or palsy, to be alive with 
a vitality that is not wearing us out — safety and 
progress? And we can have them both only as we 
do not dare to try to make these lives our own, but 
give them up to God, and live them not for our- 
selves but for Him. The Jew who wants safety 
only stays ignominiously in Egypt. The Jew who 
wants freedom only starts out by himself across the 
desert and is seen no more, but leaves his bones 
whitening among the sands. The Jew who wants 
safety and freedom both gives himself to God and 
follows the Ark of the Covenant. 

And so the Christian follows Christ. Now upon 
this side and now upon that he wanders in his weak- 
ness, but he always comes back to the central track 
in which the Ark has passed. He will carry nothing 
with him that cannot go through the often straight 
and narrow places where his Leader walks. He will 
never let a thought of fear come in so long as he 
sees that Leader out before him, to show him that 
he is on the right road. And so at last, just as the 
ark led the Jews across the Jordan and into the 
Promised Land, and there they set it down in its new 
place, and lived the new life of their new home around 
it; so when Christ has led us safely intoHeaven, He 
who has led us shall take His place in our midst, 
and, gathered around Him, the new life of the re- 
deemed soul shall begin and go on, by His grace, 
in perfect safety and unhindered growth forever. 



XX. 
SONS OF GOD. 

*' Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet ap- 
pear what we shall be." — i John iii. 2. 

4 'We are the sons of God," St. John says, "and 
it doth not yet appear what we shall be." He says 
we. He binds his own experience to his disciples.' 
He does not stand apart, either telling them of 
something which belongs only to himself or an- 
nouncing what concerns only them. He does not 
say "I" or "you," but "we." His present and 
future are theirs, and theirs are his. And this is 
almost always St. John's way. It seems to be the 
necessary character of all the truest and deepest re 
ligion when it is experimentally conceived. The 
profoundest experiences admit of no monopoly 
The attempt to limit them strips their whole value 
out of them. I cannot believe in the highest spirit- 
ual privileges for myself, unless I believe in their 
possibility for you ; nor can I really think them 
possible for you unless I know that I too may have 
them. So it is by the experimental character 
of all his religion, the way in which his theology 
comes out of his life, that St. John is brought into 
clear understanding of and sympathy with the 

346 






sons of god 347 

spiritual life of others, and says, " We are the sons 
of God." 

We want to look at this statement of the Chris- 
tian life, with reference to its present and its future, 
which John makes for himself and those who believe 
with him. Servants of Christ together, they lived 
the same life now, and the same prospects stretched 
out before them all. They were the sons of God, 
and that sonship must open into a fuller life which 
they could not yet grasp or understand. It did not 
yet appear what they should be. These were the 
two elements of their life. 

And notice, first, how these are really the ele- 
ments of all the highest and most successful living. 
All the best life that we see about us, all the truest 
parts of our own life, have been characterized by a 
certain combination. They have united a clear, 
tangible, intelligible present to a vast and indefinite 
future. Out from some fixed and certain point, 
where everything was solid and indisputable, they 
have reached into a distance which stretched beyond 
their ken and lost itself in visions of unexplored 
possibilities. The best moments of all our lives, as 
we look back upon them, seem, I am sure, to be 
the times when we were clearest about our present 
position and present duty, and when the possibili- 
ties of life seemed most infinite to us. The best 
scenes in the ever-moving panorama have been those 
which had in them the elements of the best pictures 
— a clear, strong foreground, where the foot was 
planted solidly, and a vast vague outlook, where the 
imagination might find endless room to range; a 



348 SONS OF GOD 

steady point to stand on and infinity to look into. 
Both are essential to the happiest and largest life, — 
not merely a vast future and not merely a solid 
present, but the two together. 

Just look at one or two of the points of life where 
these two characteristics supremely meet, and see if 
they are not the strongest and most beautiful. They 
meet in childhood most pre-eminently. Nowhere 
is the present so definite and clear as there. The 
simple relations that surround his life, the few plain 
duties that belong to every day, the narrow circle in 
which his habits move, the comprehensible authority 
that presses him on every side — all make the child's 
life tangible with a distinctness that is lost in the 
complicated relations that come with later years. 
He is one thing— his father's son. That is his every- 
thing — his fountain of enjoyment, his law of work, 
his rest, and his incitement. But at the same time, 
what wide outlooks from that strong simple stand- 
ing point! What visions come to that boy, shut in 
to the limits of his father's care! How vast life 
looks to him! Just because the foreground is so 
sharp and real, the distant stretches into a more 
measureless infinity. Because he understands the 
limited present so clearly, he dreams of the future 
so enthusiastically. But is it not the union of these 
two, of the limited present with the limitless future, 
that makes the charm and romance of his child- 
hood? He knows what he is now, but it doth not 
yet appear what he shall be. 

There is another moment in which the same 
union appears, and to which something of the same 



SONS OF GOD 349 

charm belongs. It is the time when the young man 
has just chosen his profession and looks out into the 
possibilities of that work in life whose new tools are 
thrilling the unfamiliar hands that have just grasped 
them. I think that there is no more interesting or 
beautiful time in life. He is a boy no longer. The 
boyish fixedness in the limitations of his home is 
over. Those doors have opened years ago, and let 
him out into the unsettledness that belongs next in 
life. He has passed through the years of early 
youth, the years in college, when everything is 
vague and doubtful, when the boy does not know 
either what he is to be or what he is. At last his 
feet have touched the solid ground. "I am this" 
he is able to say once more. "Here is my ground. 
Now I am a doctor, a merchant, a minister, a 
lawyer." It is not mere conceit in the new sign- 
board or the new surplice that you see glowing in 
his face; it is a healthy satisfaction in being some- 
thing, and knowing what he is. But in that glow- 
ing moment does he see what he shall be? Do any 
limits of his new work stand up in the distance? Is 
it not just then, when his feet are set firm on the 
strong ground, that the horizon of his profession 
sweeps away from him? Never before and never 
after does the work seem so vast. To be the per- 
fect lawyer, the perfect minister, the perfect 
merchant, never before and never after seems so 
unattainable. By and by, among the ridges and 
the hollows of his professional life, the horizon of 
its possibilities contracts, and he gets some point in 
his eye which is the farthest that he can attain ; but 



350 SONS OF GOD 

the glory of this first moment is that the new work 
allows itself no limits, and the neophyte, strong in 
a definite task and gazing into an indefinite prospect, 
can say : "I am this now. What I shall be doth not 
yet appear." 

The same is true of the clear and convinced ac- 
ceptance of any strong, clear truth. You come to 
the unhesitating belief in any fundamental principle 
in philosophy or politics or social life, and are there 
not two elements in the satisfaction of that strong 
moment when you fasten yourself upon it? You 
say: "This is strong: how good it is to be here! " 
and you say also: "I wonder where this will carry 
me, — what other thing shall I come to believe be- 
cause of my believing this? " At that good moment 
when you thoroughly believe in a new truth, your 
feet plant themselves firmer and your eyes look out 
wider. The ground grows solid under you and the 
distance vast before you. 

As one says this, he longs to stop and point out 
to the young people who listen to him what a lesson 
and law of life all this involves. Fixity and range, 
a definite working-place and a vast prospect, — these 
are the necessary conditions of the best and most 
effective life. Every man must have these two 
conditions, or his life grows weak and narrow. 
What then? One wants to say these two things: 
First, find yourself a place. Do not be drifting 
hither and thither, ready to do anything and doing 
nothing. Be something as early and as wisely as 
you can find for yourself a place in some profession, 
in some of the clear, tangible, definite tasks of men. 



SONS OF GOD 351 

Do not let the accident of wealth be your curse by 
standing between you and a work in life. Do not 
let anything hinder you from the deep satisfaction 
of knowing something, doing something, being 
something, having something, — of which you can 
say to yourself and other people, "I am this/' 
However it may be in other lands, there is no chance 
here in America for a man to do his best good or 
live his best life except in some definite and recog- 
nized employment of his powers. But be sure your 
work is large enough to give you prospects, and be 
sure you see the prospects fhat it offers. No pro- 
fession is worthy that does not give a man room to 
look out into more usefulness and higher character 
than he can comprehend at once; but any honest 
task is capable of being so largely conceived that he 
who enters into it may see stretching before him the 
promise of things to do and be that will stir his en- 
thusiasm and satisfy his best desires. 

So this is the lesson of our truth : Be something 
definite and special, but let that something be so 
large, and be it in so large a spirit, that you shall not 
be able to be it all at once, but that it shall tempt 
you on forever to indefinitely greater things. Two 
kinds of creatures haunt our city as they have 
haunted cities ever since Cain, the son of Adam, 
built the first. We know them both, and we have 
seen the harm that both can do. One is the vision- 
ary and the other is the drudge. The visionary is 
the man who has no present ; the drudge is the man 
who has no future. The visionary never can say, 
"Now, I am this." The drudge never lifts up his 



352 SONS OF GOD 

eyes and says, "It doth not yet appear what I shall 
be." To the visionary all is future; to the drudge 
there is nothing but the present. One's life floats 
off like the smoke from the city's chimneys; the 
others runs off like water from the city's streets. To 
be saved from being either, to be strong and per- 
manent and useful — that can come only by joining a 
clear, sharp, solid work to large hopes and great am- 
bitions ; by seeing visions from some peak of rock. 
But now we turn from all this general discussion 
to find the same principle which we have been de- 
scribing at work in Christian life. St. John says, 
"Now are we the sons of God." There is the pres- 
ent for him and his disciples. Ah, my dear friends, 
we must put ourselves back into a time when the 
simplest truths of Christianity were all new; we 
must strip off all the familiarity which Christian 
thought and love have clustered about the idea of 
God's Fatherhood before we can understand how 
strong and clear a fact that was in the experience of 
those first disciples. "We are the sons of God." 
Except in some inspired poet here and there, the 
first sense that all men were God's children had been 
lost. Men had counted themselves and treated their 
brethren like brutes. They had drifted alike out 
of the responsibilities and the joys of sonship to the 
Almighty. Then Christ had come and made them 
again, so far as they would accept His blessing, the 
sons of God. "To as many as received Him, to 
them gave He power to become the sons of God." 
What does that mean? Not that He made men 
something which it had never been in man to be 



sons of god 353 

before; He made it possible for man to come where 
he always had belonged. Not that He established 
a new relationship between man and his Creator; 
He declared the beauty and glory of the first rela- 
tionship from which man had voluntarily departed. 
It was a redemption. It is nowhere said that Christ 
made God man's Father. He made man God's 
child by showing him the unquenched love that was 
in his Father's heart, and then by the touch of love, 
made vital and strong by suffering, wakening up the 
divine consciousness, the power of godliness, the 
power of living like a child of God, in the human 
heart. 

I said how new and strong a fact that was to 
those disciples, but how new and strong it is to any 
man now who really plants his feet upon it ! You 
have been living like a child of the world or a child 
of the devil. Nothing that you ever do or say 
would ever indicate — nay, you have yourself for- 
gotten — that there is anything divine about you. 
None of the restraints and none of the incentives of 
high parentage are in your life. But Christ comes, 
comes to you as truly as He came to those peasants 
fishing on the lake, or to that tax-man sitting at his 
table. He brings and sets before you a human life. 
How human it is every act in it bears witness. If 
any one tells you that He is different from you, of 
another race, you cry: "No; this is a man indeed, 
the type, the pattern, the interpreter of this human- 
ity of mine. He is a man like me, and yet behold 
He surely is a Son of God. Behold the filialness 
that runs through all His life. He has the divine 



354 S0NS OF GOD 

nature in Him everywhere. He calls God His 
Father not merely in His words but in His actions. 
My Brother, and the Son of God! What am I, 
then?" You think, and the thought grows into a 
new consciousness that floods your life with peace 
and solemnity and strength: "Why, then, I too 
am God's son. Then He was right when He 
talked about 'His Father' and ' My Father.' He 
has taught me that God is my Father. He has 
made me a son of God." That is what it means! 
You have received Him and He has given you the 
power to become a son of God. And what then? 
Standing strong upon that point how clear it is! 
The old doubts of your life — the doubts about 
what you are and how you came here and whether 
it is worth while to be here at all — are all answered 
in this new certainty that you are God's son. You 
are no longer bewildered about duty; you have 
accepted your Father's law. You are not in doubt 
how to treat these men about you, — they are your 
Father's children. Everything has grown definite 
and plain in that. The sand under your feet has 
turned to rock. You have a strong and sure pres- 
ent standing-place, now that you can say, "I am a 
son of God." 

But yet, with all that new preciseness, has not the 
other element of strong life come too? Has not 
the future widened as the present has grown firm 
beneath you? Is not life more infinite, now that the 
central point of life is clear? While you did not 
know what you were, it did not seem very likely 
that you would ever be anything more. Now that 



SONS OF GOD 355 

you know you are God's child, you are sure that 
there are untold, unguessed regions of life and char- 
acter. This is but the beginning. It doth not yet 
appear what you shall be. The end is very far — a 
whole eternity away. 

I feel sure that I am touching here one of the 
commonest consciousnesses of the Christian life. 
Its vastness is bound up with its first simple cer- 
tainty. As it assures itself of a present relationship 
to God new features open before it. The clearer it 
becomes in realizing what it is, the more vast and 
vague becomes to it the prospect of what it is to be. 
I should like to suggest to you how this appears in 
several different departments of the Christian life. 

First, it is true of Christian belief. I think that 
this forces itself upon us constantly — that it is the 
shallow and not the profound, the half and not the 
whole believer who thinks that he has exhausted 
the capacities of his belief. The more profound a 
man is in his belief the more he looks forward and 
expects developments and enlargements of what he 
now holds to be true. Take two believers in any 
doctrine — of the Trinity, for instance, or of the 
Atonement. Let one of them be the ordinary flip- 
pant matter-of-course believer, of whose kind our 
churches are so full. And let the other be a man 
whose very soul has drunk in the truth that he be- 
lieves, who lives upon it, who has seized it with the 
strong eagerness of a hungry heart. The first of 
these will surely be the man who will expect no 
opening or richening of the faith he holds, who will 
expect to believe in the Trinity or the Atonement 



356 SONS OF GOD 

always just exactly as he believes in it to-day, and 
who will insist that other men shall hold his truth 
just after his pattern, and be indignant at every least 
departure from it. On the other hand, the man who 
holds the doctrine more profoundly will be the man 
who says: "This doctrine I shall always hold, but 
the very preciousnes of it shows me that it is far too 
rich for me to have comprehended it completely. I 
have not mastered all its power. I have not fathomed 
all its mystery. New sides it surely has to turn to 
me. I shall see it new forever." And so he will 
look with tolerance upon his brethren who already 
see this truth in other lights than his. The deepest 
faith is strongest in hope and charity. He who 
most profoundly knows that he is the son of God is 
most ready to leave the future to his Father, most 
ready to own that it doth not yet appear what he 
shall be. 

And the same thing is true about the Christian 
affections as about the Christian faith. They, too, 
as they grow deeper and stronger under the influence 
of Christ, become aware of their own present limita- 
tions and look forward to a vast, as yet unknown, 
extension. The man who has never learned that he 
is a son of God is satisfied with the little ordinary 
exercise of his affectional nature in the common re- 
lationship of daily life. To love his children and 
his country with the ordinary warmth of parentship 
and patriotism, and so do his duty respectably to 
both out of this commonplace affection, seems to 
him enough. He thinks of nothing further. But 
make that man God's son, deepen his life with 



sons of god 357 

Christ, give to everything about him the sweet 
solemnity which it gathers from the Father's hands 
that hold it, and how that man's affections 
strengthen ! With what new vehemence he loves 
and hates! How the new holiness he sees sum- 
mons an unguessed power of admiration, and the 
meanness which he used to disregard stirs him with 
passionate indignation ! How the sight of misery 
evokes a new kind of pity, and the sight of joy a 
strangely heightened gratitude and congratulation ! 
But in this deepening of the affections they find out 
their imperfection. There are some tasks they can- 
not undertake. Do you not know it? As you grow 
more sensitive there open to you efforts to which 
your sensitiveness is not equal. There is a virtue 
above praise, a pain that outgoes pity, a voice that 
is too terrible for blame, a joy that we dare not 
congratulate. All these we pass back beyond our- 
selves to God who alone is fit to deal with them ; 
but yet they open to us prospects of growth, hints, 
and suggestions that the affectional life in us has only 
just begun its work and is some day to attain a 
power of enjoyment and culture which is yet un- 
imagined. 

Everywhere with the strengthening and clarifying 
of any of our powers, its range and outlook widens. 
It is so with Christian work as well as with faith 
and affection. A man whose labor has been desul- 
tory, purposeless, unintelligent, begins to work as a 
son of God. I have often tried to describe what 
that change is. It is not that the occupations alter. 
They may go on just the same. In his store or in 



358 SONS OF GOD 

his study the man still handles the same tools, and 
all his outside life remains unchanged. The differ- 
ence is in the spirit which he works with. Once it 
was for himself, now it is for the Father he has 
found. Once it was as his own slave, now it is as 
the willing servant of that Christ who has made him 
a son of God. What new power will that put into 
his work? It will make it certainly more precise and 
conscientious in every least detail. Just as his Lord 
is more sacred to him than himself, just as the desire 
to do His will precisely becomes stronger than any 
old impulse of self-seeking, just so will each minutest 
part of all his work be faithfully and scrupulously 
done; but at the same time the greatness of the 
Christ for whom he works will enter into his labor 
and spread it out to infinite results. His work will 
enter into the great fulfilment of the Divine Will 
which is going on all through the universe, and be 
inspired by the anticipation of its endless prospects. 
Still the new son of God works at the forge or the 
bar, but wherever he works, working for Christ, he 
is able to meet Christ's command and labor not for 
the meat which perisheth, but for that which en- 
dureth unto everlasting life. Ah, my dear friends, 
is it not what we need? Something which shall take 
these daily tasks of ours which are so trivial that we 
either neglect them or else are slaves to them, and 
redeem them from their littleness so that we shall 
do them with a joyful conscientiousness, and at the 
same time find in them continual suggestions of 
larger tasks, of the infinite issues of every faithful 
work in the unknown future? And that can come 



sons of god 359 

only by our whole life being taken up and set over 
on to new ground where we shall do everything for 
God. 

Here, then, are these three — knowledge, affection, 
work. In each of them do we not see the power of 
Christianity at once to intensify the present and to 
expand the future ? As we look at the men in his- 
tory whose lives have been most full of the sense of 
their own sonship and of the Fatherhood of God, 
something of the same character seems to shine out 
in all of their diversity. Think of Moses, the pa- 
tient, faithful governor, the man of affairs, shaping 
out for his people a scheme of government full of 
minute details, alert, vivid, strong, feeling the pres- 
ent always under his feet and yet yearning for the 
unseen things to which all these seen things 
pointed, the prophet of the future as well as the 
toiler in the present, enduring the present "as see- 
ing Him who is invisible.* ' Look at David, with 
the clearest present experiences of pain and joy, of 
rapture, sin, and repentance that any man ever had, 
at least that any man ever told, yet always suggest- 
ing larger experiences than his own, so that the 
Psalms which he wrote about himself have even 
availed to sing the story of the humiliation and the 
triumph of the incarnate God. Think of the Pro- 
phets, those real seers of the Old Testament, seeing 
the future because they saw the present so pro- 
foundly, coming by insight into foresight. Think 
of Paul with his clear creed, yet glorying in his 
ignorance of what was still beyond. "I am this 
now," each of them in his own way seems to cry, 



360 SONS OF GOD 

"this now certainly and clearly, but there is more 
beyond. This is only the beginning. It doth not 
yet appear what we shall be." There lies the charm 
and strength of all of them. Nay, why should we 
stop with them, why should we not dare to speak of 
Jesus? — fastening Himself into His own present 
there in Palestine, with a strength that has never 
been equalled, and yet reaching out and claiming 
eternity for the fulfilment of His purposes. He was 
the perfect Son of God, so eager about His Father's 
business, and yet using those mysterious words, "Of 
that day knoweth no man, no, not the angels which 
are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father' ' — 
the vivid present and the unknown future. "Now 
are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be." 

It is strange how, if we look widely enough, the 
needs of life, the things that are wanting to make 
life what it ought to be, are everywhere the same. 
What do we need in religion? Greater clearness 
and greater breadth, a sharper faith and a larger 
expectation, less vagueness and less bigotry. What 
do we need in politics and public life? More faith- 
fulness and more outlook, a more honest and de- 
voted care for every day's details of public business 
and a more inspired prospect of the better possibili- 
ties of government, less unfaithfulness and less 
routine. What do we need in education? More 
concientious hard work and larger thoughts of learn- 
ing, less superficialness and less pedantry. What do 
you need in your daily life? Ah! do you not know 
well enough? Is it not that you should do your 



SONS OF GOD 361 

duty and hold your truth at once more strictly and 
more largely? You want to go to your life to-mor- 
row morning and take it up with other hands, to 
delight in it, to dwell on every detail of it with joy, 
to do it with a thoroughness that you have lamenta- 
bly lacked before; and yet not to be crushed by it, 
not to be reduced to a mere school-teaching or shop- 
tending or housekeeping machine, — but to see be- 
yond your work into eternity. Everywhere the need 
is still the same, from the senator at the capital 
down to the school boy at his desk, — a sharper pres- 
ent and a vaster future ; not either gained at the ex- 
pense of the other, but both together making life 
shine with the intensity and the broadness of the sun. 
And can that need, the same everywhere, be ever 
everywhere supplied? It can, if men can ever really 
come to be the sons of God, if life can be all over 
the wide earth the doing of His will in grateful love, 
— if everywhere men can feel His eye judging their 
hourly faithfulness and see His hand pointing them 
on into infinity. When that comes for all the world, 
then the world's redemption is attained and its new 
life begins. When that comes for you and me, then 
we are redeemed and our new life is begun. 

We grow profoundly weary of hearing narrow 
men — wrapped up in the present, given to some little 
business, shutting their eyes to all the vast outlooks 
of life — pour their cheap sneers upon any feeble ef- 
fort that any poor soul near them makes to realize a 
higher or a little broader life, to live for other peo- 
ple, to live for their own souls, to live for God. 
There is hardly any such attempt, however clumsy, 






362 SONS OF GOD 

that is not more respectable than the miserable cyni- 
cism with which men, who know nothing of the im- 
pulse out of which it springs, stand round and try to 
sneer it down. But still the weakness of very many 
of such attempts is evident enough. Men try after 
the vague and distant who have not first fastened 
themselves in the tangible and near. To be a 
maundering philanthropist, and weep over the woes 
of men half-round the globe while your brother begs 
in vain at your door; to long for the conversion of 
China while the heathenism here in Boston does not 
kindle you or shame you ; to dwell with rapture on 
the service you will do for God all through eternity 
in heaven, and yet let the task that He has given 
you to do to-day lie unattacked ; these have been 
the subjects of cheap satire till it is commonplace 
enough. But it is not always, by any means, the 
contemptible hypocrisy that men suppose. It is a 
foolish, helpless reaching out after the future, with 
no strong foothold in the present. Still it does 
show an aspiration, however ignorant, a longing, 
however shallow. But it must deepen itself with 
present duty. It must strongly fasten itself in the 
near. So only can it reach out to the future and the 
distant worthily and strongly. The philanthropist 
whose care for the poor child who has fallen in the 
street here is intensified by the cry of suffering that 
reaches him from a suffering world, the Christian 
who is first in evangelizing the home heathen and 
the heathen of China too, the saint who, dreaming 
of heaven, makes earth heavenly with the daily do- 
ing of duty and service of the Lord, — there are no 



SONS OF GOD 363 

sneers for them ; or the few poor creatures who ven- 
ture to pour their feeble contempt on lives like these 
have it blown back in their own faces, and find 
themselves despised, 

I dare to hope that what I have said to you to- 
day — if it meets any of your experiences and falls 
in with any of your desires — will give you help. It 
may be that there is some one here who has found 
just the dissatisfaction with life that I have aimed 
at. Such an one says: "I would not be what I have 
been. I vacillate between two wrong conditions. 
When I try to do my duty faithfully I grow a slave 
to its details, and every lofty expectation and spirit- 
ual wish is lost. When I fling my soul out into the 
future and expect eternity and reach after heaven, 
my present work, the life that I ought to be living 
now, grows weak and lies neglected." Ah, if it 
were only as easy to help you to the remedy as it is 
to tell you what you need. You must be a son of 
God! That is your only salvation. And if you ask 
me, "How can I be God's son?" the answer is: 
"You are God's son already, if you only knew it." 
And if you say, "How can I know it?" then you 
give me a chance to tell you once more what it is 
always such a joy to tell: "Jesus, God's Son, your 
Brother, came to show it to you. He must show it 
to you. You must go to Him, — nay, you must let 
Him come and speak to you. You must see His 
filialness. You must hear His message. You must 
feel the power of His Cross telling you how your 
Father loved you. 'He that hath seen me hath 



364 SONS OF GOD 

seen the Father/ He declared. You must see 
Him with your soul, and so you shall see God." 

When that is done, then the new consciousness of 
sonship shall fill you. Everything you do and think 
and say shall be deep and strong and happy with 
your Father's presence. You shall go on your way 
singing, "Now I am a son of God." And what 
then? The infinite future shall open around the 
clear and beautiful present. "What is this new life 
to come to? I cannot tell. It doth not yet appear 
what I shall be." Suspicions and faint glimpses of 
it shall come to you as you work; the thought of 
those who once were with you and have gone on be- 
fore you, to learn more of the mystery of love, shall 
strengthen and encourage you ; but yet you shall 
not be impatient. Enough that now you are God's 
son, and that all which that sonship contains is 
waiting for you. Enough that you are on the sea, 
with your ship's prow set towards the perfect shore. 
What does it matter whether the storms make your 
voyage a day more or less? The distance before you 
you cannot read, but in it is the same God who is 
with you. You live by Him, and so you live deeper 
and deeper into Him. Your life is full, through 
Him, of those two powers by which a human life is 
saved, — faithfulness and hope, — faithfulness made 
enthusiastic by hope, and hope made clear by faith- 
fulness. That is eternal life — to know God by Christ, 



XXI. 

THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 

A NEW YEAR'S SERMON. 

" And I that am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt, will 
yet make thee to dwell in tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn 
feast." — Hosea xii. 9. 

The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles must have been 
most picturesque and striking. Every year, as the 
seventh month came round, the city of Jerusalem 
bloomed into a forest. The houses were deserted 
and all the people took up their abodes in booths 
or tents built temporarily and slightly wherever any 
room for them could be found. They were set up 
upon the flat tops of the dwellings, and along the 
crowded streets, and in the broad court-yard of the 
temple, and in the public squares. The staid, re- 
spectable inhabitants of the houses came out and 
lived in primitive fashion under the extemporaneous 
shelter of leaves, alongside of the homeless wander- 
ers who knew what such outdoor lodging was by the 
whole habit of their lives. The palace and the hovel 
alike turned their inhabitants into the streets. Every 
morning while the feast lasted it must have seemed 
as if the entire population were ready to forsake the 

365 



366 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 

beds where they had spent the night and move on 
like an army on the march, or a host of pilgrims 
ready for the next stage of their journey, and leave 
the old city of David empty on its hills. 

And what was the meaning of the feast of 
tents? 

"That your generations may know that I made 
the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I 
brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the 
Lord your God." This is the explanation of its pur- 
pose which Jehovah gives in Leviticus. It was a 
perpetual memorial of the life in the wilderness. 
God wanted to be to them always "the Lord their 
God which brought them up out of the land of 
Egypt, out of the house of bondage." He never 
wanted them to forget those forty years. And so 
the Feast of Tabernacles restored it every year. 

And the value of such reminiscence lay in three 
things. First, it reminded the people of God's 
mercy which had led them through all their dangers. 
Then, it made them feel the comfort and security 
of the settled life into which they had arrived. And 
yet again, it suggested to them the deeper sense in 
which they will still and must always be wanderers; 
the way in which, though the wanderings of their 
feet in the wilderness were over, the higher part of 
them, their spiritual part, must always be a wan- 
derer in a world which has no final satisfaction for 
the human soul. Every year the great acted parable 
proclaimed this truth. As the multitude left their 
solid houses to live in travellers' tents, could be 
heard the heart of the people saying to itself: "We 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 367 

have here no continuing city, but we seek one. We 
are strangers and pilgrims on the earth." 

In this last meaning of it, is not to-day a Feast of 
Tabernacles? On the first day of a new year, with 
the sense of transition strong within us and the at- 
mosphere of change everywhere about us, is it not 
exactly as if our souls went out of their solid houses 
and lived in booths? We leave for the moment 
some, at least, of our well-built certainties and dwell 
for awhile amid the realized doubtfulness of life. 
Our well-built certainties are not pulled down. They 
stand there still like the Jews* houses in Jerusalem. 
We shall go back to them after our Feast of Taber- 
nacles is over. But for the time the narrow walls 
are forsaken and we live in larger air. The possibili- 
ties of life seem greater. The skies and stars and 
waving branches of the booths are over our heads. 

And here comes in the verse out of the prophet 
Hosea, which I have made my text. "I will yet 
make thee to dwell in tabernacles/' says God to 
His people, "as in the days of the solemn feast." 
May not the words mean for us something as large 
as this? — that the dispensation of tabernacles is per- 
petual; that always in the midst of man's most 
settled life there shall come times when he shall be 
compelled to remember his unsettledness ; and then, 
what seems to be suggested in the last words of the 
verse, that these times of realized unsettledness, 
shall be and ought to be feast-times, — in other words 
that, truly understood, it is a joy and privilege and 
exaltation to the soul of the true man when he is 
made to realize that his most fixed condition is not 



368 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 






really fixed, but sure of disturbance, exposed to all 
the winds of change. This is a great truth — worthy 
of being set forth in picturesque and elaborate sym- 
bol. For not the things which happen to us, but 
the meanings which the things which happen have 
for us, are the real facts of our existence. Not that 
we dwell in tabernacles, but whether our dwelling 
in tabernacles is a fast or a feast is the really impor- 
tant thing. 

To many men it is a fast. They crawl out of their 
solid houses and take up their abode in their tents 
of uncertainty because they cannot help themselves. 
They dwell there with groans and tears. They 
chant the litanies of sorrow. They eat black bread 
and bitter herbs. They are all gladness when the 
Fast of Tabernacles is over, and they can go singing 
back to their dear solidity again, to forget that 
things are not to be forever as they are to-day. To 
other men the whole experience is a festival. The 
anticipation of it makes the long year bright and 
saves it from monotony. To be reminded that the 
most settled routines are after all but temporary 
habits, that the most permanent abodes are only 
halting-places on a journey, that change and not 
continuance is the true condition of the deepest life; 
— all this is full of exhilaration and delight. The 
soul's booth under the waving branches is glad and 
bright with song ; and by and by when the soul re- 
turns into its well-built routine again, it carries with 
it the newly felt certainty of change, to burn like a 
candle in the house until the next time to leave the 
house for the wide-open sky shall come. 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 369 

What makes the difference in these two sorts of 
men? "It is a difference of temperament," we say 
— covering our puzzling question with a large-sized 
word, as one puts the cover on a boiling pot in 
hopes that the confusion within will boil itself out 
of itself to some result. "It is a difference of tem- 
perament/ ' we say, as if temperaments were abso- 
lute, eternal things, with no beginning and no end, 
which came from nowhere and which issued in noth- 
ing. Temperaments are but the habits of the soul, 
which have become unconscious of their causes, as 
habits do, but which have their causes nevertheless. 
What really makes the difference in the two sorts of 
men is their willingness or unwillingness to think of 
the infiniteness of life. 

Does that seem a great name to give to the reason 
why men like or dislike to face the changefulness of 
the world? But remember that the deepest differ- 
ences of human natures must of necessity declare 
themselves in superficial varieties of act and feeling. 
The heart of the earth is convulsed and a small 
crack on the earth's surface tells the story first. And 
so when one of God's Feasts of Tabernacles comes, 
and all mankind together are driven out into the 
thought of instability and changefulness, one man 
goes reluctantly and bitterly because the summons 
disturbs that which he had dared to think of as 
final, and another man right by his side goes trium- 
phant and joyous because the whole event satisfies 
his deepest expectation and his fundamental thought 
of life. "I knew this could not be the end," he 

says; "I knew that there can be no end until the 
24 



: 



370 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 

infinite perfection has been reached. The tent-life 
is the true life until the building of God, the house 
not made with hands, is reached. Therefore wel- 
come this signal and token and reminder of it, break- 
ing in upon the hardening security to which my life 
was settling." Is it not clear how to the first man 
the Feast of Tabernacles is a fast while it is a tru 
feast to the other? 

All this is true of every department of life. It is 
true about men's thoughts. A man learns all he can 
learn, and is satisfied. His creed is fixed and settled. 
He and the men about him think alike. There is no 
dream of growth or of enlargement. To change an 
item of this faith is of necessity to wander into error. 
Another man no less sincerely holds his faith. It is 
his light and law. He lives by it and works by it ; 
but all the time he knows that the entire truth is 
more than any creed can state, is vaster and more 
mysterious than any human soul can comprehend. 
He not merely holds this as a conviction ; it fills him 
through and through and colors all his thought. He 
never slips out of the certainty that what he holds, 
true as it is, is only a small part and fraction of the 
truth. 

Now to these two men, standing side by side, 
comes one of God's Feasts of Tabernacles. Do you 
not see now what that means? There comes one of 
those times in which God makes the whole world 
feel how large is truth and how far all men are from 
having found its end. These two men have to go 
out together and live in their booths side by side. 
The law of the Feast is universal. Neither can stay 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 371 

behind in his house, however much he wishes. But 
how differently they go! To one the feast is no 
feast, but a mournful fast. To the other it is full of 
solemn joy. 

I think all this is most familiar to us now. This 
day of ours is one of God's Feasts of Tabernacles. 
In things of faith and creed what hosts of the peo- 
ple of God are living in tents, seekers not finders, 
sure that they have not yet reached the "continuing 
city " of final and established truth. To some men 
it is a perpetual misery. To other men it is a per- 
petual delight. For them to think that they had 
reached the fullest truth which they were capable of 
knowing — that would be misery to them. For it 
would mean, "We are not then capable or worthy 
of dealing with and seeking the infinite. Here in 
this little limit we must rest "; and so man's noblest 
conception of himself and noblest ambition for his 
future perishes. 

There comes some great disturbance on a land — a 
war or a commercial crisis. There are the two sorts 
of greeting for it in men's souls. One kind of man 
goes into it as if he went to the funeral of every- 
thing. Another man goes to it as to a feast — "a 
solemn feast," as Hosea calls it, — not a time of friv- 
olity or lightness, but a time when the world grows 
large and the souls of men shake themselves free of 
the fixed littleness of life. Such days as these are 
Feasts of Tabernacles. You walk the streets and 
see men's faces anxious and perplexed. The quiet 
complacency is gone. These men evidently do not 
hold to-morrow's bread in their safe hands. They 



372 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 

do not know where to-morrow's bread will come 
from. They listen to each other's prophecies and 
turn away incredulous. " What does he know about 
it more than I do? What does either of us know? 
Is it not all uncertain?" 

Yet have you not sometimes, in the midst of such 
uncertain days, seen here and there an eye that 
kindled and a face that flushed? Have you not 
sometimes caught glimpse of a look which made you 
think of the words of Jesus: "Then look up and lift 
up your head, for your redemption draweth nigh? 1 
It was a look of liberty. It seemed as if to some 
men this confusion meant the breaking of cables and 
the scattering of clouds. In the disappointment of 
their immediate hopes, the deepest instincts and ex- 
pectations of their souls sailed forth into satisfaction. 
"Behold, then," they say, "business is not every- 
thing; and business success is not the end of living. 
A man can live without it. There are higher things, 
— we have dreamed of them in the visions of the 
night. Now our eyes see them in the broad light of 
this tumultuous day." 

Men used to think that the constitution of Society 
was fixed forever. J ust how class was to live with 
class, — who was to command and who was to obey, 
who was to sleep in luxury and who was to do the 
work, all this was settled and decided in the nature 
of things. The axioms were all found out and 
folded away. They never could be changed. 
Within these solid walls we were to live forever. 
There, too, the Feast of Tabernacles has arrived. 
The trumpet has blown and man after man is seen, 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 373 

under a compulsion which he cannot resist, coming 
out of his solid house of absolute conviction and 
taking up his abode in the frail booth of uncertainty. 
Some men — perhaps most men — hate it and would 
be thankful to be let alone. To other men the 
change is full of a mysterious and awful joy. The 
whole of this mysterious life is a "solemn feast." 

To the more personal and private Feasts of Tab- 
ernacles I need only to refer, and your own memories 
will recognize them. Your own hearts and homes 
are full of them. You said: "My household's way 
is fixed for many years. There is nothing here that 
will not last." You limited your thought and wish 
to what your walls contained. And then, just when 
you were surest, the solid walls turned to tremulous 
branches, and you were out among the winds, under 
the stars, and nothing was fixed. Anything was 
possible. It may have been a joyous or a melan- 
choly change. It may have been a glad or sad event 
which broke the spell and brought the difference. 
That does not matter. The change from certainty 
to uncertainty, from fixedness to instability, is the 
great thing. And then, oh, how the real question 
stood in the midst of your astonished household, 
and looked you in the face, and asked each one, 
"Have you then any hold on the infiniteness of 
life? " And each one answered by the way in which 
he met the new life of the opened household. A 
solemn joy or a despondent dread was in the face of 
each. 

This, then, is what I mean when I say that the 
way in which the Feast of Tabernacles becomer a fast 



374 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 

or a feast to any man depends upon whether he has 
learned to live in the infinity of life. There is a na- 
ture to which the thought of the temporariness and 
transitoriness and changefulness of things is abso- 
lutely necessary, and brings the highest inspiration, 
— not from mere restlessness and the superficial 
weariness with circumstances which have been but 
half exhausted and enjoyed, but from the need of 
some symbol or expression of that sense of incom- 
pleteness and aspiration of which the heart is full. 
The outward change is but a symbol and in some de- 
gree a means. If it goes no deeper and does not get 
at the soul and make it live a new life, and think new 
thoughts, and be another soul, it comes to very little. 
Indeed, there are very many of the noblest natures 
who are realizing the instability of life by the con- 
tinual fluctuation of thought and feeling even while 
every outward circumstance remains unchanged. 
There is great beauty in this unseen Feast of Taber- 
nacles which very often is being held in a man's soul, 
when it seems to all his friends who live about him 
as if he were dwelling in a house of the most solid 
unchangeableness. At the very time when his life 
seems to be most absolutely monotonous, he may 
be going outside of his most treasured and well-built 
convictions and recognizing how partial they are, 
how they cannot be the final home of a soul's faith. 
And so he may be dwelling for the moment in the 
open booth, into which come freely suggestions of 
undiscovered truth and revelations of the distant 
future. 

Whether the changefulness be that of outward 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 375 

and visible conditions or the subtler one of inward 
thoughts, there are men to whom it brings inspira- 
tion which they could not lose without losing their 
best strength. Every disturbance and unsettlement 
opens anew the infinite prospect. Every jolt and 
jar assures them that the chariot is moving. The 
fact of present change is a satisfaction for them, be- 
cause it justifies their hope that they shall not always 
be the poor thing which they are to-day, but shall 
attain diviner things. 

And then, what follows from this? Must it not 
be that any power which opens the infinite life to 
any man must be the interpreter and transfigurer to 
him of all the petty special changefulness of life? 
And so, if Christ "brings life and immortality to 
light," if He truly compels the man who becomes 
His disciple to look far on and see vast things 
before him, then He irradiates changefulness and 
makes it a satisfaction and assurance to the soul. 

I feel so strongly that here, and here alone, we 
are on the highest and the strongest ground! We 
make most feeble efforts at consolation. Mostly our 
efforts at consolation, either for ourselves or one an- 
other, are merely, in one form or another, the reiter- 
ation of the fact of the inevitableness of change. 
"Why is it that nothing will stay fixed or settled? " 
And you think that you have answered the queru- 
lous and puzzling question when you say: "Oh, 
they never have! In the days of Julius Caesar, in 
the days of Queen Elizabeth, things changed just as 
they do to-day. They always have. They always 
will. Go back and take it as it always was and is 



376 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 

and will be to the end." There is no consolation 
there. Suppose not you, but Christ, tries to con- 
sole the puzzled soul; suppose He begins not here 
in the detail of the man's present existence, but far 
off, far on in the great purpose of the man's being, 
in the far range of his eternal life. "You are eter- 
nal," He declares. "You belong to the Eternal 
Father, and you share His immortality. You are a 
stranger here, a stranger and a traveller. This is no 
place for you to live in. You can be at rest only 
when you have reached the Infinite and have found 
your home in God." Let Christ teach the man that. 
Let Him fill the man with that consciousness. Let 
Him make the man enthusiastically, triumphantly 
aware that not here and now, but far away, is the 
completion and rest of his soul ; and then let Christ 
turn back with him suddenly to the present moment 
of which the man was complaining, and say: "With 
all this future prospect vast before you, what do you 
want here and now? Do you want everything to 
speak of fixity and settlement, as if there never 
could be any alteration? or do you want the sound 
and sight of change to be in everything?" Does 
not the man's soul answer truly: "Let me not root 
myself too deeply where I do not mean nor wish to 
stay. Let me have ever round me the promises and 
prophecies of the great freedom, the great progress 
to which any soul belongs. O, for the Feast of 
Tabernacles, in which I shall know myself but a pil- 
grim ! O, for a perpetual Feast of Tabernacles, in 
which all shall seem a pilgrimage, and the infinite 
prospect shall shine ever through the scattered dust 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 377 

of these earthly experiences, broken with perpetual 
change ! ' ' 

It may be that it seems to be asking too much of 
man that he should thus desire and demand perpet- 
ual disturbance and continual change. Let us be 
thankful, then, that God does not wait for him to de- 
mand it, but sends it to him whether he will or no. 
He treats us as you treat your children. Not what 
they wish, but what they need, you give them. It 
would be cruel to wait for the conscious desire be- 
fore you, seeing the unconscious need, sent the sup- 
ply. God does not wait for us to say: "Now it is 
time for me to be uprooted. Now let my health be 
shaken. Now let my riches disappear. Now let 
the solid landscape fade in mist, and the great dis- 
pensation of uncertainty arise. ,, That would be 
cruelty indeed. As well might the surgeon wait 
till the sufferer himself called for the knife. God, 
by His own will, knowing Himself that the time has 
come, beckons, and we follow Him, often reluctantly, 
often in tears. And it is only as we follow Him that 
our hearts respond to His heart, and we see the 
beauty of the new life into the midst of which He 
leads us, and by and by are surprised at our own 
voices praising Him for giving us that from which 
we shrank, that which we never should have had 
the courage or the strength to ask. 

Thus we have sung our Psalm of Changefulness 
and have felt through it all, I trust, the music of 
God's purpose. It is not accident. It is not because 
this man's roof leaked and this man's wall was 
crumbling that all the world have come out of their 



378 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 

houses and are living on the streets of Jerusalem in 
tents. It is the utterance of a fundamental truth of 
life. It is the recognition of an unchanging fact. 
That fact is change; whose perpetual and necessary 
recurrence is the most changeless thing in all the 
history of man. But it is not the only fact. It is 
not the deepest fact. And now it is quite time for 
us to remind ourselves, and to say, before we close, 
that unless beneath every change there runs a deeper 
identity, change becomes demoralizing and corrupt. 
See how it was in this historic instance which has 
made the basis of our study. God says, by the lips of 
Hosea: "I that am the Lord thy God from the land 
of Egypt will yet make thee to dwell in taber- 
nacles.' ' "The Lord thy God from the land of 
Egypt !" All that was hundreds of years ago. 
Change after change had come, following quick upon 
each other, from the time of that great change which 
brought the chosen people out of the house of bond- 
age. The Feast of Tabernacles had been kept every 
year. And yet all the time there had been, behind 
and under all, the identity of God and their identity 
and the unchangeable fact of their relationship to 
Him. Everything else had changed ; but these three 
things were always there: "The Lord," "/%>God," 
and "from the land of Egypt." And now, five 
hundred years afterwards, when the people are sum- 
moned once more out of their dwellings, the great 
identities are reasserted in the very midst of the re- 
newed demand for change. "I that am the Lord 
thy God from the land of Egypt, will make thee to 
dwell in tabernacles." 






THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 379 

We must not take half the teaching and not take 
the whole. God summons us to constant change, 
but it is God that summons us, the God who is un- 
changeable; and we who pass under His summons 
from one region of life on into another are the same 
beings always, and between us and Him there is the 
unalterable kinship and memory of manifested love. 
Whatever be the variations of the ever-richening 
music, that theme runs through it all and keeps it 
all compact and real and simple. 

O my dear friends, do you not know the picture 
of all this in your earthly life? You go from field to 
field. The landscape changes constantly. The 
ground under your feet is now barren and now rich. 
The sky over your head is now stormy and now 
clear. Onward you go, and every year is a new 
field with other foliage and other soil ; but, as you 
go, the same Friend always holds you hand-in-hand. 
He is the same. You are the same. And the same 
love and duty bind you to each other. That is the 
identity which sounds its steady cadence under every 
change and binds the years together. Personal 
identity is everything. Could you live in the same 
house — every least bit of furniture the same — with 
the dear faces of your family vanished, and make 
life seem the same? Could you live with your un- 
broken family about you in the depths of Africa or 
Hindostan, and make life seem very different? To 
live a life of changing circumstance, with great life- 
long friendships running through it from end to end, 
that is the lot of highest privilege. It keeps change 
and identity both, but identity always as the deeper 



380 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 






fact, — change woven on identity, as the golden pat- 
tern is woven on the golden cloth. 

There is no limit to this truth. It stretches out 
from world to world and fills eternity. You know 
nothing about the world beyond the grave save that 
your father or your child is there. You know 
nothing of what will happen to you as you enter 
on that world, but you believe that your father and 
your child will greet you, and that you will know 
each other — you and they. That makes the unseen 
world exactly what it is best that it should be to 
you. That makes it mysterious, yet real, — real, 
yet mysterious. 

Can you not lift all that and feel how through the 
confusion of change runs the identity of God and of 
your soul, and of the love and duty which have 
place between them? Everything is changed since 
twenty years ago. Only God is the same, and you 
are the same, and as you were loving Him and obey- 
ing Him then, and He was loving and protecting 
you, so now you love Him and obey Him, and He 
loves you and protects you still. Everything will 
be changed ten years hence. Only wherever you are, 
whatever you are doing then, God will be the same 
and you will be the same; and you will be loving 
and obeying Him, and He will be loving and pro- 
tecting you. 

I glory in the vitality and the solidity together 
which that truth gives to life. I see the practical 
law of life which will result from such a truth. 
Be sure of God and of yourself, and of the love be- 
tween your soul and His, and then shrink from no 



THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 38 1 

changef ulness, cling to no present ; be ready for new 
skies, new tasks, new truths. This is the voice that 
comes to us out of the ever-changing world, which 
has the unchanging God at its heart. 

May that voice be heard in our Feast of Taber- 
nacles now! We will not, we cannot, shut our eyes 
to the certainty of change to-day, but, O Christ, into 
the midst of our change bring the changelessness of 
God ! Then it shall be indeed a feast that we cele- 
brate, for every change shall only make the change- 
less more manifest and sure. And at the last the 
world shall fade away from us only to let Him, in 
whom the preciousness of the world has always 
lain, shine out upon us in His perfect glory and 
unhindered love ! 

THE END. 



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